Clojures

Clojure is a modern, Lisp-inspired programming language that emphasizes functional programming, immutability, and simplicity. It runs primarily on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is designed to support interactive development, scalable systems, and robust concurrency. Clojure treats code as data and provides a powerful macro system that allows developers to extend the language.

The language features persistent, immutable data structures such as lists, vectors, maps, and sets, enabling safe and efficient manipulation of data in concurrent environments. It is dynamically typed, with optional type hints, and favors a concise, expressive syntax that supports functional patterns like higher-order functions, lazy sequences, and recursion.

Clojure offers seamless interoperability with Java, permitting direct use of Java libraries and frameworks. It has variants such as ClojureScript, which compiles to JavaScript for use in web and client applications, and ClojureCLR for the .NET platform. A core concurrency feature is software transactional memory (STM), along with other state-management constructs like refs, agents, and atoms, to coordinate changes across multiple threads.

Development often follows a read-eval-print loop (REPL) workflow, which supports rapid experimentation and iterative design. The ecosystem includes tooling for building and managing projects, such as Leiningen and deps.edn, and a growing collection of libraries for web development, data processing, and scripting.

Clojure was created by Rich Hickey and first released in 2007. Since then it has built a diverse community around its emphasis on immutability, functional programming, and strong Java interoperability.