In a typical Java shop or enterprise code factory, after 2-5 years you reach a plateau and the only way up is to become an "architect" or move into management. So that's what the better people in the mainstream Java world want to do, and ultimately the tenor is focused on "enterprise architecture" and Spring/Hibernate add-ons instead of making beautiful, powerful, or maintainable software and solving hard problems.

The Clojure community (I'm at Clojure/West as we speak) is full of people who (a) are really good, like top 1%, and (b) have at least the intention to be career-long programmers (in some capacity).

That's something you don't see in the Java shops. Yes, there are good programmers in them, but they usually are planning a move into management because the way most companies do software is limiting and puts you at an artificial ceiling after no more than 5 years.

Is it a gross simplification to make this about languages? Perhaps, but the empowerment that languages like Clojure give to individual contributors can be a game changer. It's reminiscent of what startups used to be, before the VC-funded ecosystem became MBA Culture's west coast colony.