I like the ideas behind clojure, I really do. I even wrote a non-trivial personal project with it. However, coming back to that code after two months was basically like the plot of Memento. I ended up rewriting it in JavaScript instead.
Some prefer semicolons and other "visual garbage" in their code, I like minimalism and structure.
No other language can retain readability on different screens like Clojure can. Even reading it in a narrow screen of a mobile phone - it would wrap, but still retain its readability. Good luck trying that with literally any other (non-lispy) language.
Comparing that to your 30 years practice of XML is not at all useful.
As to your other point - maybe. I'm not seeing anywhere near enough potential payoff to invest years into it, though. Also, I'd argue that makes it a terribly impractical language if you're interested in getting work done.
To clarify, I don't agree one needs years to become competent in clojure. But if one did, that just makes it a worse value proposition.
Sure you can get things done and ignore the maintenance horror later.
Anyways, in the 30 years we at least steadily transfer features from Lisp.
This is not a snarky question, I'm genuinely curious since I personally have no problem coming back to old clojure code.
The other factors are cultural - so much of the clojure ecosystem is badly documented, or not at all. Sure, I can go and read your code to figure out what it does. But that comes back to the limited time argument, unless I'm paid for it, I'd rather write stuff in a language with a culture of proper documentation. For a recent example that does an outstanding job, see Elixir.
Finally, the ecosystem just feels... abandoned? Like walking through a ghost town. A lot of things on GitHub look incredible, but if there's no commits in the past 3 years I'm not inclined to invest time in it. I know the common argument about them being finished, and I don't buy it - non-trivial code rarely is.