> I see Clojure as conceptually stronger, easier to explain and teach, to finish projects quickly and run them reliably.
First hand unfortunately I find the opposite is true - I have personally seen Clojure abandoned in a company and F# adopted instead in the same company albeit different parts. A rare case considering the nature of both langs. F#, to me really is like a statically typed Python that's got better performance, has better portable package management, and reads easier than OcAML/Haskell to newcomers with its "light" mode syntax. Having used Scala, Clojure F# feels like a simplification - it only takes in more expressiveness if it can stay simple. It also reads quite similar to most new breed lang's (e.g. for me when I look at Rust - if I squint many of the constructs look similar). In a month I've seen dynamic language only devs (e.g. JS, Ruby) with no static typing experience be productive in F# contributing advanced code - I've also seen Clojure abandoned in the same company with dev's perplexed with all the brackets, lost as the code scales, etc. Because it is simpler than Scala, Haskell, etc but does pretty much most of what these langs do (80%/20% rule) its a good gateway into functional programming IMO. With some of the new features in .NET 5 it can also be faster since it tends to run closer to the metal than Scala (i.e. no implicit wrapper types, rather use compile time polymorphism, stack allocation support, value types, etc when needed)
F# also has a REPL, and yes its simple but it does the job I argue with a lower learning curve. With one single script file you can load all dependent packages, and write your quick script straight from a naked .NET installation. Just `dotnet fsi script.fsx` or if you want to shebang the script that works too. May not be as pretty as Clojure but it has most of the bells and whistles and arguably much easier for a newbie to understand. There's also a ClojureScript like facility in Fable, heard good things but haven't used it personally. Being able to cut and paste a script in text (e.g. via Slack) to a colleague and it just works on their machine, libraries/packages restored whether they are on a Mac, Windows, Linux machine is pretty cool. All they need is .NET 5 installed.
On the teaching aspect using a JS dev (could be any lang) as an example - a module in F# is the same as a module in JS approximately - they contain functions that refer to other modules. Async blocks are similar to async/await and promises (! instead of await keyword). After that they get the hang of it pretty quickly. They even start to want to move away from their previous language as they realise things just work first time more often. They don't need to learn classes, OO, or all the frameworks typical of a C# project and all the "patterns". In other words it still feels concise like JS/Go/Ruby/etc to them. Functions chained to other functions in a readable syntax - that's it.
I've also seen F# dev's present F# code on slide decks to non technical people and it be well received - they didn't realize it was actual code. There's Twitter threads over the years on this exact scenario and it's what initially made me curious about the language. I can't imagine that happening with Clojure and its syntax of brackets, :require, classpath setup, etc etc.