...Can't the Clojure people just implement a native code compiler for mobile stuff? I mean, come on, CL/Scheme have been doing that for years, and they weren't constrained by the JVM, forcing a more optimized design.
You are welcome to start working on it at any time.
You can already write Android applications using Clojure[0] without too much trouble. There were a few rough edges when I last dabbled, but that was ~1.5 years ago and I imagine the ecosystem has only gotten better in the meantime.
No, the eco-system hardly changed and it just increases the development effort by forcing developers to move out of the Android Studio workflow and being slower than pure Java.
You could try running ClojureScript over React Native. Nice thing about that is you use React paradigms for UI which IMO makes ClojureScript really shine, and you can use Figwheel etc. and it can be cross-platform.
...Still not compiled to native. Which is what my question was about.
Clojure was designed from the beginning to be a hosted language. It's its greatest strength (great Java and JS interop) and weakness (no native binaries).
Why can't we compile it to native? Lisp wasn't even designed to be run by computers, but that didn't stop Steve Russel.
well, it's not just interop, but many core language functions are currently handed off to Java or JS. e.g. string operations and regex engine immediately come to mind.
...So hand them off to C.
There have been some that target C. I haven't looked into them other than searching for them.