Is Clojure still a thing? I sure would hope so, but I haven't seen much of Clojure activity in HN recently.

The language itself is still getting updates, a new major release was just dropped a month or two ago.

I do find that for about 5 years things seemed to be slowing down. Though I keep seeing it pop up, and new exciting projects seem to pop up from time to time.

Just today I saw an article about Dyna3, a relational programming language for AI and ML that was implemented on top of Clojure.

I miss the Strange Loop conference. I think a lot of Clojure buzz was generated there. Clojure West and a few others so a decent job, but the quality of the talks at Strange Loop were second to none. Not that it was a Clojure specific conference, but it had that focus on elegance that I don't see very often, and the organizer was a something like the Prince of Clojure, if I recall correctly.

I'm still enjoying the language, and all my projects still build and run just fine.

The major frustration I have with the platform is 3D graphics. That's a JVM issue overall though.

As others have said, Clojure is still a thing. For anyone catching up with Clojure again after some time: check out Babashka! Think bash scripts, written in Clojure. It's delightful.

https://babashka.org/

I still use it. They finally fixed my biggest complaint about it a year ago, which is that you couldn't use vanilla Clojure lambdas for the Java functional interface, and so you'd have to reify that interface and it was bulky and ugly. Now it works fine so long as the interfaces actually have the @FunctionalInterface attribute.

Not every project uses @FunctionalInterface, but I've been trying to add it to places [1] [2] [3], and now I'm able to use Clojure in a lot more places.

[1] https://github.com/LMAX-Exchange/disruptor/pull/492

[2] https://github.com/apache/kafka/pull/19234

[3] https://github.com/apache/kafka/pull/19366

I’d say clojure is very alive and happy. I’m a clojure newb and have been having a super fun time getting into it. Lots of very neat tools are in active development (babashka is the best thing that’s happened to my developer life in a while!!)

The small-medium sized community is actually fantastic for learning. The big names in the community are only a slack away, and everybody is so enthusiastic.

There's more clojure users than ever before and the team is active and afaik larger than ever before.

Things just mature and hype isn't as cool when you heard it 5 years ago.

Is Make still a thing? I sure would hope so, but I haven't seen much of Make activity in HN recently.

I sense Clojure attracts a bunch of people that prefers building stuff than talking about building stuff.

It's bad for marketing, but seems promising for the project longevity.

I thought Rich was being a bit pretentious when he compared to violin, but few people ask "are violins still a thing?"

Not surprised as Clojure is boring tech: slowly evolving with a big focus on stability (ie backwards compatibility).

Meanwhile: the core team has been extended the last couple of years. Also this summer NuBank (the company behind Clojure) announced the first 'Clojure Developer Advocate'. Their role will be to "focus on ways to support the existing Clojure community and grow the community through outreach and development."^1

[1]: https://building.nubank.com/clojure-developer-advocate-nuban...

EDIT: wording.

I was asking the same question today after investigating XTDB¹ (a Clojure centric bitemporal DB) and went looking for a batteries included WebAssembly framework like Blazor²

1. https://xtdb.com/

2. https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blaz...

:yes #{of course it is}

A lot of the Clojure editors I liked that were made specifically for Clojure seemed to have died down too. It's a shame, they were cool and unique.

Between Clojure and Racket, those have always been my two favorite Lisp / Scheme languages. I don't do a lot of Lisp but when I do its either in Clojure (thanks to Lein) or in Racket.

Very much still a thing. Even on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=false&qu...

It is, but the community has been shrinking in recent years.

FWIW, Google Trends shows the hype peaking in 2016, but I doubt that reflects usage as much as buzz.

Instead, if you look at the annual State of Clojure survey results, which solicits opinions directly from the community, the number of responders peaked in 2020 at ~2500, and is down to ~1500 for the most recent 2024 survey.

- 2020 State of Clojure - https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-CDBF7CYT7/

- 2024 State of Clojure - https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-hht04mGydwZ6Nqr7N8vj...