What are the best use cases for using Clojure for new development? [closed]

Question

Why should I choose Clojure over another language for a new project? In what areas does it excel?

Answer 1

Some scenarios where I would use Clojure:

• You are building a new, highly concurrent application that needs to scale reliably. In my opinion, Clojure's concurrency features (STM, immutability-by-default, lock free MVCC) are the best of any major language at present. Rick Hickey's excellent video about Identity and State is a great way to get a feeling for this.

• You are a Java-based shop that wants a productive dynamic language that can be used for rapid development or scripting while maintaining your investment in a large Java code base. I've found Clojure pretty effective at "gluing together" Java code since the interop capabilities are extremely good (and simple!).

• If you want to use a functional programming language Clojure is pretty good (it's not quite as "pure" as Haskell but has all the key features - first class functions, higher order function composition, immutability, laziness)

• If you work in a field where there is a major need for code manipulation (compilers, DSLs, natural language processing, genetic programming), where the LISP "code is data" philosophy enables you to be extremely productive. This is a sweet spot for homoiconic LISP based languages in general.

Answer 2

At the risk of providing exactly the sort of reductive non-answer that Devin is referring to: I chose Clojure because I like the functional programming style and Clojure lets me do that on the JVM and interop with lots of existing code that runs on the JVM.

So the question then becomes: Why functional programming?

Immutable state - lack of side-effects, easier testing, better support for concurrency (and, in future, parallelism).

Small, functional components that can be easily reused and composed to construct large, flexible systems.