Statically typed languages reduce the need to know how the data is structured or manipulated. The market has clearly chosen this benefit over what Clojure can provide.
With static typing, you are doing specification and optimization at the same time, which is maybe necessary because compilers and languages are not sufficiently smart but also because of this mix it complicates reasoning about correctness and performance. Also static typing introduces a whole universe of problems with itself. That's why we have reflection or stuff like memory inefficient IP address objects in Java:
For a simple IPv4 address normally representable using 4 bytes/ 32 bits Java uses 56 bytes. The reason for it is Inet4Address object takes 24 B and the InetAddressHolder object takes another 32 B. The InetAddressHolder can contain not only the address but also the address family and original hostname that was possibly resolved to the address.
For an IPv6 address normally representable using 16 bytes/ 128 bits Java uses 120 bytes. An Inet6Address contains the InetAddressHolder inherited from InetAddress and adds an Inet6AddressHolder that has additional information such as the scope of the address and a byte array containing the actual address. This is an interesting approach especially when compared to the implementation of UUID, which uses two longs for storing the 128 bits of data.
Java's approach is causing 15x overhead for IPv4 and 7.5x overhead for IPv6 which seems excessive. Is this just bad design or excessive faith in static typing combined with OOP?
But that's not what a Clojure dev would do.
1) We use Malli [0] (or similar) to check specs and coerce types if needed at every point. Checks can be left on in production (I do), or disable–up to you.
2) If the coercion is difficult, use something like Meander. [1]
3) If even that isn't straightforward and you need actual logic in the loop, use Specter. [2]
4) If you're not sure what going on at intermediate steps, use FlowStorm [3].
5) But you're going to be processing a lot of data you haven't seen before! Use, Malli with test.check [4] and make use of property-based testing with generators.
None of this is "advanced" Clojure, this is bread-and-butter stuff I use every day.
6) Need a Notebook-like experience to get better visualization of intermediate data? Use Clerk [5].
7) Need special checks on API usage within your codebase? Use clj-kondo [6] with custom linters. They're less than 10 lines each.
Unlike default-mutable languages, or typed, it's safe and easy to use libraries with Clojure and they tend to have very little churn. Total opposite from Python or JavaScript (if you're used to that).
It's almost impossible to give the impression of what it is like to develop with Clojure if you've only ever used languages with static typing, or languages from the Algol family.
Honestly, I hated Clojure's syntax at first BECAUSE I COULDN'T READ IT, and I loathed "structural editing." After 2-3 weeks, I read it just fine and it's hard to remember I ever couldn't do so. Now I like it, and structural editing makes it so easy to change your code, I couldn't live without it at this point.
Basically, all my "fears"/dislikes were unfounded—it was a skill issue on my part, not a problem with Clojure.
[0] https://github.com/metosin/malli
[1] https://github.com/noprompt/meander
[2] https://github.com/redplanetlabs/specter
[3] https://www.flow-storm.org/
But this long list of runtime libraries is definitely a downside of Clojure. It's people trying to grapple with things mostly solved with static typing where you can just write a(b(c())) and it fails before it hits your fancy yet-another-thing-to-learn Malli library in runtime.
They might be great libraries, but you're only seeing one side of the trade-off.
I learned Emacs with evil-mode, paredit, nrepl/cider, and Clojure in my early 20s and used them for six years, and I was pretty gung-ho about it like you. But eventually I started using static typed languages for work and decided that I couldn't go back. It's like trying to read Javascript after you've spent five years with Typescript. You just think "wow, I can't believe I did that for so long."
And I'm remembering times I've used paper and pencil to figure out how map is being transformed as it's passed through library code. I don't miss that.
Apparently I and my fellow Clojure devs aren't real Clojure devs. Or perhaps you mean "true" clojure developers, or "good" clojure developers. (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)
And even if we were Clojure devs we've inherited multiple big Clojure codebases that were apparently written by non-Clojure devs, and heavily refactoring is not on the to-do list.
