Why Clojure?

Clojure has been growing in popularity since its first major release in 2008. If you or your company is interested in understanding the value of Clojure at a high level, read on.

Clojure might be the answer if:

Your existing application is written in Java

Clojure runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and has direct access to your existing Java code. Conversely, you can access your Clojure code from Java.

You have serious performance requirements

Building flexible, performant systems in Clojure without accidental complexity is what Clojure was designed to do. Does your application (or some portion of it) have a hard requirement to be able to handle 10,000 messages per second? Clojure can do that, and it can do so safely.

You need it built fast

Clojure lets us get up and running with a prototype fast. It can use all of the libraries available in the Java ecosystem, and give you access to the fantastic libraries written specifically for Clojure. Rapid prototyping is a part of the language in Clojure. From the beginning of a project, we can immediately interact with a running system and show you examples of new or changing behavior to keep the feedback loop as tight as possible.

You need it built well

Leveraging the JVM means you are free to use the massive amount of battle-tested, enterprise-level libraries available to Java programmers.

You value ‘Write Once, Run Everywhere.’

If you’re not already on the JVM, there are plenty of benefits to using it, but one of the biggest and oft-forgotten reasons to develop your application on the JVM is that you can run your application on Windows, Mac, Linux, and anywhere else the JVM happens to be available out of the box.

You want to attract talented developers to your business

Great engineers are always learning something new and exciting. Include Clojure in your next job post and attract great people to your company. Companies renowned for their engineering departments are using Clojure, including tech giants like Apple and Amazon.

But don’t take our word for it…

In closing, I’ll leave you with a short list of stories, lists, and metrics that provide some independent backup of the points we’ve already discussed:

• Against the Grain: How We Built the Next Generation Online Travel Agency using Amazon, Clojure, and a Comically Small Team
• 60,000% Growth in 7 Months Using Clojure and AWS
• Clojure Success Stories
• A graph of the relative growth in job postings mentioning Clojure compared to “Ruby” and “Rails”.

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for a future “Why Clojure?” that’s aimed more at the technical side.

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