j2438

Yes, I think one reason for Clojure's popularity is that it allows you to escape Java while still remaining on the JVM and being able to interoperate with your existing Java codebase.

That said, for a variety of reasons, I would actually prefer to not be tied to the JVM.

Have not yet learned to use or appreciate macros.

The idea of everyone having to come up with their own syntax for such commonly-needed things as, say, hashes, seems counter-productive to me. That would lead to everyone's code looking like a different language.

I have so far stuck with Clojure instead of a Scheme primarily because of the nice literal syntax for maps, sets, vectors, and regexes that Clojure supports. I don't want to give that up and just use cons/car/cdr.

And also, last time I looked at Racket, it seemed very focused on academics. I just wanted to write some simple Scheme in a .scm file and try it out (a script), but I think I had to choose a language first (maybe a line at the top of the file? Don't recall) --- the Racket ecosystem seemed off-putting.