The gap between the clojure libs and the java libs and actually calling java is a jarring experience and really isn't a plus. While in theory the java interop is a selling point, if you don't need that it ends up being extra syntactical complexity.

Now I haven't coded extensively in clojure, so a lot of it stylistic unfamiliarity. It does hold back people from adopting clojure.

One reason why I'm excited never to use the JVM again is the huge memory footprint it uses. The best practices for production java is to figure out how much ram your process will need max under normal (not leaking) usage... and set both max and min ram to that (Xmx and Xms). It's a real hog on ram, and when running under clustered tools like k8 with can do memory overcommits it really reduces your flexibilty.

I'm super psyched for all these tiny go and rust programs that run and use like 50 mb ram or even less. Running a cluster of 50 containers is really no heavier than a single Xmx1g java process!