I think that indeed both Scala and Kotlin are actually a layer over Java in a way. I really like Clojure a lot. In my opinion I think the reason clojure doesn't grow that fast is purely because although lots of people claim that Java is a "horrible language", those same people likely do not want to do anything that is fundamentally different than java and clojure is an example of that. The fact that it also works in the JVM doesn't help to the argument. Some Kotlin developers I've met aren't even aware that there is a JVM running when they start a kotlin "program" to begin with.
The main issue with clojure is the relatively steep learning curve, for example due to the lack of standards for many common tasks (it follows quite a lot the lisp philosophy of having a lot home made)
I think the main reason there is a steep curve comes from the fact that many new Kotlin developers are for the most part former Java developers. Many of them express an enormous disdain for the Java language, while at the same time the fact that they once did Java is the main reason why they can assimilate Kotlin so well. Clojure is different and many of these Kotlin developers will never even consider doing code in other languages. That is also why Kotlin is being used now to create frontend applications by using javascript compilers to turn kotlin code into javascript code, removing the need for Kotlin developers to learn anything about javascript. Having all of this with a new language comes from the powerful marketing that comes from the Kotlin foundation to promote the language. Clojure doesn't have that marketing power and that influences how people think. It is almost like fame. Kotlin is now a famous language and so people assume that it is good, almost gaining a divine classification, and so if some people look at Clojure with this mentality then they will never find the benefits of using it.
yes dude but its not STD afaik so not really an argument. Scala is similar to most general purpose languages, you can just do things as you do them normally and ignore most of the monads and other shit, expecially because scala alow you to write oop. But if let say we we take haskell or clojure its a compleatly different thing even if we get rid of monads and other stuff
Scala still has a lot of insane stuff that is completely distinct from Java in it's "standard" like implicits and extension functions and eta expansion. The OO model is not the same. Plus, Scala compiles to JS or Native and interops with C, Python, Java, and JavaScript. It's a very useful lightweight language that can be extended in several directions for lots of usecases. Java isn't like that at all.
Languages without types are not all the same, things like object destructuring, truthiness (only nil and false are falsey) and the data based approach makes it easy to reason about input and output. When writing clojure are feel more confident than with python or js that my program will work.
