[bad_user]

That's not correct, because if they described only how to transform the data at each step, then you couldn't describe `take` or `flatMap`.

[weavejester]

Because Clojure isn't a pure functional language, transducers may be stateful. `take` uses a volatile (i.e. a fast, mutable variable) to retain state. I don't believe a `flatMap` transducer exists in Clojure yet.