Almost anything (if not all) requires one to put in years of practice before one is adept. "a" non-trivial "personal" project probably won't cut it.
Comparing that to your 30 years practice of XML is not at all useful.
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.