2025 Clojure Survey: Insights, Surprises, and What Really Matters

Hello, my name is Kristoff Newman. I am the Closure developer advocate on the Closure Core team and I am here with Peter Stroberg, otherwise known as Pez in the community and Nate Jones who I also host a podcast with and we're here to talk about the closure survey. But I just would want to give you each a chance to introduce your own set your own selves. So, so Peter. >> Yeah. Yes. So, I'm Peter Sternburg also. Yeah. Also known as Spz and um also known as the Calva guy. [laughter] I guess that's that's where I'm coming from. I'm a dev tooling nut really. So, and um simply in love with closure. So, that's me. >> And um I'm Nate Jones. Uh Kristoff and I we have a fun podcast uh closure design functional design and closure and uh I also host the Los Angeles closure meetup and I've been fascinated with closure for a long time. So definitely fun and looking forward to talking about this stuff. >> Yeah, I thought we would just spend some time uh looking at the some of the survey highlights and digging in a little bit. It's it's always hard to just put all of the content in the write up. there's there's some nuance and of course we're all coming from different perspectives in the closure community and so I thought it would be fun to just spend some time talking about that and and put that out there. So what we're going to do is we're going to walk through the the survey results here and and spend a little bit of time discussing each of the results from our own perspective. And so you can find these results on closure.org org and read them if you haven't already. And we have a link to the full uh report where you can get all of the interesting things, versions of things people are running and so on and so forth. And then this this is some of the interesting highlights that I noticed when I was analyzing the results. And so go to closure.org and you can see that in the news area you can find a link to the full results. So to to open the conversation here, one of the things that we did this year that's new is we tried to look at closures use across different countries. And so we had over 80 countries represented and and some of those countries really stood out by just number of respondents. So we had a high number of respondents in US, Brazil, Germany, United Kingdom. those constituted half of the respondents in fact and so you can see in this graphic where the blue is darker you have more respondents where it's lighter you have fewer or none and then but then it gets very interesting when you do per capita and so in per capita analysis you see in northern Europe in Finland Norway Sweden Denmark Switzerland I I think actually Pez you might know something about closure in Sweden And [laughter] you can see the results are very high. So I'm I'm very curious to hear hear some thoughts. >> Yeah, it it actually blows me away. Scandinavia just brings this Yeah. the top four. It's it's very very interesting. And I don't know I can't even form a theory why why that why that would be but it is it is super super striking and you don't see US and you don't see Brazil among the top 10 um >> yeah they're actually very close to the median so when I was analyzing it once you do per capita analysis they're uh a Austria Australia United States Brazil and Canada are all around the middle. So they're not low in terms of per capita, but they're they're not the highest. It's actually a bunch of countries in Europe and of course Uruguay as as the outlier here representing South America. >> But yeah, they're more in the median which is interesting. >> It is interesting. If I could speculate a bit about it, it it is a bit the the structure in uh in Scandinavian companies is very flat and and decisions are pushed out to the people who are affected by them. Um and maybe that drives people picking up functional and closure as a tool because they the one that actually are affected by that choice. And then some other countries it's more top down and decided by people who don't have skin in the game in the same in the same same manner. That's my only theory around it. >> I think aren't the Scandinavian countries like historically have very high quality of living and very happy people? Like they're they're like the happiest people in the world. So I don't know if there's I don't know if there's some crossover there, you know, if closure helps or if closure that's because you know [laughter] >> what is probably a closure happy. [laughter] Um, I do think that there's probably something to do with like what large companies have chosen closure and then they often will have other companies nearby that like cast off, not cast off, but like you know like I'm sure there's plenty of companies in Brazil that use Closure because Newbank uses Closure and so that's why it makes it makes a a a community and so I wonder if you know there's like a few companies in Germany or the few companies in the UK or in in the Scandinavian countries that like started it and have you know it kind of like a in a good way like a virus like you know it's like it's spreading you know >> just seeing where it starts >> in a good way [laughter] >> it's a it's it's a good virus um yeah I will say that um when I've looked at other data sets functional programming in general tends to be uh more represented in Europe than in other parts of the world just kind of as a trend My personal theory is functional programming is a pretty high leverage for the developer >> and within functional programming a few different styles that count as functional programming. Um data flow is an example sometimes of functional programming. Um you have closure which is sort of a purely functional immutable language. Hasll is another example purely functional immutable. you have kind of more of your classic functional oriented languages like traditional lisp or or ml even where they allow you to like okamel o right they allow you to do other some others multiparadigm styles >> also have a lot of research and functional programming so the swiss technical institute that's like where the scholar research um scholar research team is so Martin Nordeski is there and So there's there there anyway there's a lot of functional programming in Europe already and so my my theory is high leverage um you you need to make a big impact with um smaller teams or fewer resources and I've also in my own experience in the television industry which is totally different you you see that like you saw adoption of the open broadcasting system OBS um go really big in Europe up where once again you're doing productions on smaller budgets, smaller teams and so open source tooling is is huge there too, right? So, so I think that's that's my theory around it. >> Yeah, I agree. It's it's an interesting what what industry might might push adoption versus adoption organically. Um, >> let's [snorts] take a look at this. So in analyzing it, I looked at the years of professional experience and so there was interesting cut point. So somewhere I was looking five years or less. I I feel like if you survive five years as a professional, [laughter] you're probably going to stick around for a while, right? Um and so for some reason that I wasn't looking for a true median here. I think if you wanted a true median, it's actually a little bit closer here to, you know, dividing >> 10 11. >> Um, but I was looking for for people who are really sticking around as professional developers. They're not totally young. They've had they've been around long enough to have some projects possibly fail um or, you know, move jobs. And so about 82% of Closure developers are in that six or more category. So So there is a a large population of Closure users that have I would view them as like on the path for career programmers or career programmers. >> Yeah. They're locked in. [laughter] It's it's funny. It's funny that you we would consider and I agree with this this the line of five or six years, but that considering five or six years as being like you're in it for good. Um that's not a very long time career-wise. I mean, your careers are what 30 or 40 years long. Um and that you can get into be six years into being a developer and you're, you know, in your mid or late 20s and you're you're already, you know, set so to speak. Um, but I do agree that there's definitely like a um a momentum to sticking with it. So, um, I'm actually like I I if you had asked me before I looked at the survey like what percentage of people are like above like 10 or 15, I would say most of the community is above 10 or 15 because most of the people that I've encountered are that are, you know, later in their careers. I guess maybe middle of their careers. I don't know. It depends on how long your career is. Um, and so to see so many in the six to 10 and 11 to 15 um is well I mean it's it's it's I think it's encouraging cuz then there's there's still a lot more a lot more time for them to influence, a lot more time for them to grow. Um and um yeah, I think that's that's a good sign. Yeah, I'm I'm going to reiterate what I said before a bit that when you have agency to choose your >> tools, >> um I guess picking up closure and stuff like that is is makes makes sense and something that also drives agency is seniority. So I would expect um more senior developers with more gear years um to to gear towards uh functional and closure then but when you're a junior you don't have a say in the same sense then >> so you're saying like as a junior developer you are handed a language when you join a company you don't get to pick it but then as a senior developer you can you can pick your own language you're because you have more clout. Yeah, I think I totally that's a that's a that's a very valid thing. >> That's one of the one of the drivers here. Yeah. >> Yeah. And then I I do want to add that I expanded the years of um professional programming experience than we had in the previous survey. I think the previous survey started at 25 and up and it was like a very high bar and um actually Peter when I was talking to you you mentioned that you were I think more than 35 years of experience. >> Yeah, I mean that's my last one. [laughter] >> I said well I at least need to expand the categories all the way up to get that level of resolution because when you just have a huge bunch of people are 25 and up, you know what what's the long tail look like there? And so I'm I I'm really happy I did that based on >> that's why we see these. Yeah, that was a very good call. Um but another thing I think that maybe it's obvious a bit it's it's like with seniority the agency is one thing but another thing is also the experience. Uh so if you look at um the closure uh proposition in a in a sense uh maybe you actually need uh a lot of failures and a lot of >> pain and stuff like that in with object-oriented or whatever other uh paralleigs in order to to understand um the value prop that comes from from closure. Um so if someone tells you that yeah this is actually going to uh make you uh have less uh problems or whatever. Uh it it's just someone saying that but after five years and banging your head against uh some paradigm and stuff like that you ready in a sense more ready I guess to to give um something that seems to u address your pain points. Um but you need to have the pain points first. Yeah, I think that's a great point because I found closure to be fantastic for maintenance, right? I mean, it's fantastic in interactive development. It's fantastic in other areas, but this aspect of maintenance, like you have to live with a codebase for a while and you have to see code change hands and it and it takes a few years of experience to see that effect. Um although sometimes I remember the very first large codebase I walked into. I walked into I was working at Huelet Packard. So HP at the time and it was a pretty substantive codebase. I walked in and I just figured, oh, I'm going to get up to speed on this and then I'm going to know this and I'm going to live in this codebase for a while. And that actually wasn't really true. Um it underwent all kinds of churn when I was there. I switched projects a number of times. And so I in the first few years of my kind of big company career, I realized, oh man, like walking into a codebase and and all these nuances and and all this uh all the stuff to know and and all these issues. This is this is a big deal. This is a big deal. And so I think I think like you say Peter, like once you've experienced more of that of of the challenges of maintenance and the challenges of dependency hell and the challenges of somebody changed something over here and it caused something over there to explode and you're like, how are those related or connected? And closure solves these problems quite well. And so you you start looking around for is there a better way? >> Yeah. And I think one of the difficulties and I sure we'll cover this at some point, but like in in in getting more people to use closure or to understand the value proposition is like they you're you early on you're just so used to the pain that you experience in maintenance that you don't realize that there's a possibility of not having it. Um and and and you and so often times there will be solutions to problems you don't have. Like we talked about that a lot on our podcast. Um and and and I feel like in some ways closure has made me more um sensitive to those things in other languages where you like if I'll pro I'll program in a Python program or in a Go program or something and I feel like I feel like I'm like walking on a on the edge of a cliff and there's no guard there's no guardrail. there's no safety net. There's nothing like I've got nothing to help me. It's all my own discipline. But in closure, there's a lot more that that helps you with that. And so, yeah, it's it often makes you like [gasps] not you you don't you don't want to go back to those other things. But the thing is that you can't tell someone that, like you said, Pez, you can't tell someone about that. You can only experience it. >> Yeah. >> And that's a very persontoerson thing, you know. >> Yeah. So it's it's um if if if if you're using some programming language and tooling and you have lots of that churn and someone comes tells tells you after you have experienced that for a while you don't need to have that. uh there are actually other ways to do this and you don't have then more people will probably be happy to uh to listen to you and and and try that out whether if you come to someone happy with their closure tooling and say hey you should be using uh this instead Java or whatever and yeah then the answer is more like yeah for my dead cold dead hands right so it's [laughter] it's a different it's a Yeah, I think really um yeah, you need to you need to to figure it out uh yourself what what uh what you actually want and then I think we will see and we see in among cresurans that it's uh people who pick it up and stay with it for a while or not are not leaving. [snorts] >> Yeah, >> absolutely. >> And so I also when I was analyzing the results I had a question in my mind are is closure only attracting experienced people, right? Like do you kind of to toward our theory here? I do believe that you you experience problems in those first five years of professional programming experience that that you didn't experience in school that maybe you didn't experience as much uh in hobby programming. And so then I became concerned that maybe does closure have a to use a marketing term value proposition right or is it attractive to people um who are new in their professional programming journey or are not professional programmers. So I segmented out the data based on that. And so this graph here is people who have a a year or less of closure experience. and and we're plotting to by their professional experience. So this is a graph of professional experience for people who are new to closure. And I was very surprised um I may be very surprised this strong but I was pleasantly surprised to see that there's a very wide range of professional experience of people who are new to closure. And we actually have a pretty nice contingent of people with no professional experience who are new to closure. They're brand new. Their first programming language. It's like I didn't think that was exist, but there's 12 almost 12% of the people. Wow. >> Well, it may not be their first programming language, but they're not they're not programming professionals. So, right. >> They could be professionals of other kinds or they could be academics or but they're not programming professionals. >> Yeah. So, that's very very interesting. I I know uh in in Stockholm in the what is it called the Royal High School of Technology KTH uh there is a mathemat math professor who also teaches programming his name is Thomas Ekon and he teaches a course of programming it's called large systems programming or something like that and he used to use do it in in Java uh Then he discovered closure and then he said that he would quit if we he would have that course in Java. So now that course is since five six more years it's it's in uh they are using closure like I don't know if like 50 something like that new treasurans coming out of that course every year and so that might explain a bit about what we saw uh with uh with Sweden and and and closure but another an interesting thing is is that is that I met a few of these people uh at the Frank Prague conference, the first installment this um this fall and for some reason people heard that I like closure and then I go speak to the those guys over there and that was all his old students and they were like still super super uh fans of closure. I think only one of them were using it professionally, but they all wished they were using it professionally. So maybe that speaks against a bit what I said before, but you need to have the pain. You can also be introduced to closure uh by someone who's shows you the joy of it and then uh be a stair. So I don't know if that makes sense but anyway it's uh it it was very interesting to meet these people and see how they were like uh Thomas Ecom had all really really grabbed the the minds of of these people with closure. So it was very fascinating to see. >> Yeah. I think what your point about agency earlier comes through is like closure is not one of the most popular languages and so when you get into the realm of popularity there's other factors that go into play right and so so there seems to be this theme of developers when developers are making the choice when developers are kind of driving the choice you're going to see this higher adoption of closure when um when the CTO perhaps is making the choice. You're gonna potentially see lower adoption of closure. We we have some exceptions to that. For example, new bank is an exception. You had this pick closure >> and and drive that into the organization and and you have a a extraordinarily high adoption of closure in Brazil because of that. So when when you can get a a high-ranking person in a organization that then begins to scale due to market success, then you see all of these developers that kind of come into the language through that, right? And there's closure developers at Newbank who probably wouldn't be using Closure had they not gotten hired on at New Bank. Um, for sure. Right. And so, so there's there's these different reasons for adopting closure and and there's different forces. They're not all the same. But I I really like your point about agency, like personal agency being a factor. >> I I think that goes also to these instances where the CTO chooses it. It is still if if CTO shows us closure it's a top down thing still [snorts] right and okay so you have people using closure because the CTO told you and >> and they might not use it in in in the way like you should use it or or whatever they feel pain uh with it. So the moment that CTO goes, they bring in whatever it is they want to use instead or the new CTO uh brings in and and they they start like migrating from closure and and >> yeah I I have heard stories of of people that join a company and that are like there was a previous developer who liked closure but now that person is gone and now I'm saddled with it. You know I need to go and learn it. you know, there there's a negative connotation and I think that's what you're that's that's what you're saying coming out. Um, >> so it it needs to be your your choice to to to to be to to uh yeah for you away from it. >> Even if it's not your choice initially, it needs to become your choice over time. Otherwise the lang the the the technology choice won't won't Yeah. It's surprising how much of technology is more about human behavior and less about actual technology. >> Totally agree. >> Yeah. And so so then on that topic um we asked people this year if what is your primary language right because I wanted to really understand how closure is used in a mix of languages. I I had a theory that closure is not the sole language for most professional developers, but it's in a mix of languages. And so is it their primary language? What other languages do they use? And so of the respondents about twothirds of them are using closure or one of its dialects. So closure, closure script or babbashka or closure dart um as one of its dialects as their as their primary language. But then now we're seeing it in a mix and and I know there's like really skinny lines over here. Um but I just wanted to try to see if if this is a functional thing or a closure thing, right? And so my read on this and going and comparing it against data around language popularity is these the the ranking of these languages is most informed by popularity, right? Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, C >> and not by even by functional style because we see our functional languages >> Scola, Haskell, uh, Groovy sort of it's like multi-paradigm, right? Um, Elixir kind of being ranked relatively approximately the same as they are in in popularity schemes. That's interesting. >> So there's not a like there's not like a a follow on effect that if you use closure as your primary language um then you might use these other languages also. It's more it it's just the regular the regular popularity curve. >> Well and then we asked also what other languages have you used in the last year? Right. So so the the first question was your primary what's your primary And so the primary was clearly closure was going to be most of the respondents because this is a closure survey. And so we have what you would call a selection bias, right? So hopefully most of the people taking a closure survey are using closure in a big way. And then now we're asking people what is what languages you use? What firstly it's interesting we had people respond. So there's people responding to the survey who who feel an identification with closure in some way but did not use it in the last year which is kind of interesting right they're plugged into the community still and for some reason they're not using it but then when you look at this distribution of other languages right then now now what's going on and the functional languages here are over represented versus their general popularity elixir. If you look at like the Stack Overflow survey or if you look at um you know the uh I'm totally blinking on the Tyobi index or whatever. Um Elixir has a much smaller percentage. So So people who use Closure are also reaching for functional languages as companion languages um in the mix more often. Um whereas the primary language choice seems driven you know more possibly I speculate by work use you know some other factors not I want it whereas the secondary companion languages if if I get to use closure I'm I'm reaching for these other functional languages they're they're m highly over represented versus their popularity elixir skola but >> also there's a dynamic part of this Right. >> Yeah. Could you elaborate on that? >> Yeah. I think as a TypeScript programmer, which I am, uh uh I I see like JavaScript and Typescript that's the same thing. So to me, I read this that that JavaScript has actually is almost competing with the closure in this uh in this graph here. >> Well, you can't just add them up because this is a multi select. So um so >> yeah but I had them up in my mind because that's that's how I I read it. And then you have closure and then you have JavaScript and then you have Python and they are like uh uh distinctly dynamic uh languages. >> Yeah. The popularity up there. uh and uh um then uh I guess it also could explain why Ruby and Alex here and those are a bit uh over represented in in this in this mix as well. I think I think one of the things that uh closure does well is it has a lot of good ideas like obviously I think that the best implementation of those ideas is in closure but um I know of several programmers who are whether by choice or not there are postclosure programmers as then they're they're no longer but they're still using those ideas um or there are people that never got to use closure but I have interacted with them and I have used a closure concept and taught them that and then they they have they have attached to that but they're they're a Python programmer but that that that concept lives on in their Python programs. Um and so I think this question does highlight the like I will reach for other functional programming languages but what it doesn't show is how much of the Python or the JavaScript or the Java pro programming that's done is is influenced by closure. I I don't know how we would expose that but um I think that there's the the ideas have much farther reach than the language. Um I know that but I I don't know how to how we'd be able to see that. You know what I mean? Maybe you can see it in this data but but to me what collaborate that is is uh this uh the polyith is very popular actually in in Python because uh David Vouulich uh who was working on a team where they where they invented polyith um he's a python programmer these days and he brought like polyith with it and made a a implementation in python and it's very popular uh so it's it's spreading like like that that way into the Python community uh some of these super good closure ideas. So >> well and we'll see this a little bit in the next question but elixir was heavily influenced by closure. So Jose Valim the creator of elixir has publicly acknowledged on a number of occasions closure's influence on elixir. It's not the sole influence. And and you can definitely as you learn Elixir, you can definitely see um Closure's impression there on choices in the language. And so like like to your point, there is there is this uh effect. It'd be fun to try to figure out how to measure it, but there is sort of this effect that you see of closure's influence on other things for sure. And so then I think the next one was a bit of a surprise. So let me let me explain this a little bit. Um I'm very interested both in what are who is coming into closure and also once somebody's a closure developer how how likely are they to stick around? Right? So, so measures of attraction, measures of satisfaction. And so to that end, we asked a question, if you couldn't use closure, what programming language would you use instead? This is known as like the second best alternative, right? The idea that >> um if I can't have what I really want, what will I settle for is is informative. And so in my analysis for this question, I wanted to segment out people who were not using closure as their primary because they're already they already don't have closure, right? And so when you look look at the survey results, unfortunately, Survey Monkey doesn't give us a good way of making like custom segmentations in our analysis there, which is part of why I wrote this up and put it on closure.org. But I wanted I wanted to for the people who said closure or one of its dialects is it's primary, right? Like closure is my thing and if I can't have my thing, you know what what would I do instead? And much to my surprise, well, on principle, I put in quit programming because I wanted an option. I wanted an option that wasn't a programming language. It seemed unfair to force somebody to choose a programming language. I I was I'm always curious to give somebody the, you know, none of the above. I'm not going to do it. You know, I'm And so I put that in there. And much to my surprise, uh just under 10% of the people who have closure as their primary said they would quit programming. And um I I personally find that very very interesting, a very interesting measure of of love of closure. And I was curious did an analysis to see how many programmers are like all in on closure in the in the uh question here. What which mix of language? There's like 10% of developers that only use closure in his dialect. They they literally selected nothing else. They only selected closure in this dialect in this mix. Um, >> and so, you know, I don't know if these I haven't done an analysis to see if these are the same 10%. But, but we're basically seeing two different indicators of a 10% segment that is wildly passionate about closure. And so, I'm curious uh what what your guys's reaction [laughter] to to these results. It it's funny you should say wildly passionate about it, which I think is a part of it, but I also think it's uh wildly allergic to going back to any other language. Um, and I because I've heard that and I felt that myself is um it's it's I would rather I would rather become a a woodworker or, you know, a plumber. Not to not to say those are bad jobs, but they're just alternates. um and instead of you know dealing with immutable object uh graph [laughter] um and so I think it's both of those I do think that it's telling that uh functional programming languages are higher in this is because you know um you can continue using the ideas in another another language there's definitely other languages that promote these as being part of their core like you can program in functional style in Java or or Python or you can do that but you're kind going against the grain. And so if you can't use closure, you want to use another one that that that that's friendly to these concepts. And so yeah, definitely the other functional ones, >> right? We saw the functional languages already being over represented as adjacent languages, companion languages, and now in our second choice language, they're even more over represented, right? If you look at the relative >> up there with with all of the top. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's very very interesting. I actually for for me I I switched to programming because of closure. So for me it's uh it's really uh that third option there. >> Well and and kind of on that point I've heard definitely heard several lots of stories of people that say that closure made programming fun again. >> Yeah. Um, and I don't know that necessarily fun is a goal, but I think it made it less painful and so the fund was able to take up more of the space in their minds. Um, and so I think I think it also can enable you to actually jump into I think that's that's a fascinating like demographic is people that >> chose these questions as well, right? I guess if we assume that we are right about that closure makes programming fun. Uh I'm I'm pretty sure we are right about that. Uh then working with closure you know that programming can be fun and should be fun. >> Mhm. Oh, then if if someone rips closure from from your hands and you say, "Okay, you should pick something else." Then you probably go for something else that that could possibly be uh be fun. And then [laughter] like one of the first things you pick up, I guess. >> So for a little bit of background, so part of what I do as a developer advocate is I meet with people and I I talk with them on a regular basis. And actually, I started doing this before I got this official role, this official job doing that. I've been doing that for years at this point in time. And so, Peter, I remember when I met with you and I was just curious to hear about your how you came to Closure. How did you how did you come to using Closure? And you were telling me how you're a professional [clears throat] programmer and then you got became like a product manager and and you weren't coding at all. And I was just blown away. I was like, "Wait a minute. How can one of the most prolific people in the closure community prolific programmers, right, one of the most prolific programmers in the closure community um not be programming at all?" Like that that that blew my mind, right? And then I remember you telling me how um someone is like, "You should check this out." and kind of showed you the way and um and then got and then that reignited this love of programming and and so that story has I I mean I'm putting it in my own words and I'm sure you know you could tell the story your own way >> accurate. >> Yeah. But I I mean that that captured me, right? I was I was like wow. So, so Calva and and Peter Stroberg, right, would not be around uh as a programmer, right, without Closure um being just such a a neat different language. And so I that's that that hasn't left my mind. And so that that's part of what contributed to asking that question too because I have heard that you're not the only one I've heard who had left programming and came back because of closure. But um you're the first one I talked to that mentioned that and that grabbed me and I was just thinking that alternate universe. What what if in an alternate universe uh Peter had not come back to programming? [laughter] Where would we be? you would be fine. [laughter] >> And so speaking speaking of Calva, I do want to touch on something. I know we're bumping up a little bit against time and we'll maybe we'll get together. Let us know. So those of you who have made it this far and are watching this, let us know if this is something you're enjoying, if it's something you'd like to to hear more about. We can reconvene and and discuss this a little more. But I was very curious to uh do an analysis on the tooling side. So since we have the creator of Calva here, uh one one of the things that jumped out here and I'm going to pull up the slide is there was an interesting shift. We always ask about like what tools what tools people are using for developing closure. And because we because I did this analysis this year where I'm segmenting out new people, there is a very interesting shift that I saw here. Whereas if you look at the overall aggregate results, Emacs is still heavily represented, right? We ask what is your primary closure development environment and EMAC is still heavily represented and very popular. But as soon as you segment out the respondents to those with a year or less, then we see a shift. We see VS Code being the number one. It's almost like a straight trade. 37% 38% uh 39 almost. Um VS Code here is like 25% and here it's 25% for Emacs. So two things. It's interesting how it's almost a straight swap. It's also doesn't seem to you have a little bit lower of Intelligj and Cursive, which is kind of the main option there. A little bit lower. So, there's a little bit of decline there, but but it really looks like Calva is is affecting Emacs usage far more than uh even Intelligj. So, I I'm curious what what you think of that, Pez. Yeah. So I guess it it explains a bit like we have seen an an uptick of Calva very steady hasn't like from from the first survey I saw Calva featured in and every year uh more uh a bigger share for for Kala which which is naturally if if new users pick it up uh more than they pick up some um editor and and use that. It also might be an effect of I I was a beginner to closure when I created Kawa. >> I actually hadn't like written any closure almost. Uh so so I guess I I kind of connected with the beginner uh and from from the start tried to make Calva a very beginner friendly uh environment. So we have we have focused a bit uh bit on that. So I guess that's that's also behind this that that people in the closure community when they have someone new to Closure and they don't have a distinct favorite editor or or their favorite editor is VS Code they seem to be very comfortable with saying okay pick up Kalva is a very good beginner's choice. So I guess that's that's what I can say about it. Yeah, I think it's the whole, you know, simple versus easy. And I think we'd often say simple versus, but it's simple and easy are both, [snorts] they're both good things, but I think closure brings a simple, and I think Calva brings the easy. Um, because there have been people that I've wanted to introduce to Closure, and I'm a I'm a Neov guy, so I'm glad to see Neovm doesn't have any uh in fact, Neov is actually more for less than one year experience. um that all yeah I think the the like zero to I'm writing closure code is the easiest experience in in Calva and you want as few roadblocks as possible when you're introducing someone and I think that's why I think it it it flips um I think people might might migrate into other ones but the thing is Calva from what I understand I've not used it much but I think Calva it it it it grows with you as you get more advanced and so there isn't really as much of a reason to switch. You know, it's like, oh, you can start off with the easy one first, but then you can got to go to the, you know, the professional tools, but then no, I I think it it satisfies both of those, but because it reaches down into the the beginner, that's why it gets more adoption. to that point. I think when it comes to like closure support, uh I think it's very true that that Calva actually succeeds in also being something you can stay with. It's it's good. It's a good uh closure tool. It's not just for for for beginners. Uh unless I mean Java is a big big part of your closure project, >> right? then then cursive comes in and you know it's the best choice. Uh but but another thing I guess that could then you grow out of rather v code than than cala right okay Emacs is is such a different beast right it has so much more um in in in in the box it's it's it's a >> it's than v code has so I think that could be like a [laughter] driver. Okay. So, it's but then if you switch to to EMAC, you don't have to sacrifice any closure support. I mean, you have cyther there that I guess still is is much more covering of closure than than than Calva is. But, uh yeah, so it's uh it's definitely uh we have not sacrificed uh the the closure professional when it comes to to color. I have been like become I'm not a beginner anymore, right? So I need I need the tool to support me still. [laughter] >> Yeah, that too. And it couple things I like to think of barriers, right? And so if you're new to closure, you're perhaps you're uncertain, you know, how how how important is this to you, right? like the value delivered like with Emacs and Vim there's a time barrier there right like [laughter] >> um >> I'm I'm a heavy Vim user and name I still go and look at your article on setting up Vim because I'm just like [laughter] uh what did I do before and um and so I do think that Calva's low barrier so so we're going to see that and I I would be very curious curious to go and then kind of double segment this. So segment out by new closurist and then segment out by professional experience and see what the spread is there. I did not have enough time or um tooling [laughter] to start doing that level of sophisticated analysis. Very sadly Survey Monkey is is not really a general data science tool, >> right? But um I I would be curious I would be curious to to look at that that factor of experience professional experience because I have a theory then looking at that also that people who love Intelligj you know want to continue using the tool they love people who love Emacs want to continue using the tool they love people like who love them so >> so I think there's there's that continuity bias there also >> and so I would be even if I'm a Closure beginner. So long as I've decided closure is interesting enough for me to use. Um since if I as an Intelligj user, if I were an Intelligj user, I'm happy to then pay within the Intelligj ecosystem, right? Because I already know I love that ecosystem. So, so I think all of these are factors if you want to nuance it, but it was just very interesting to see that tradeoff happen between Calva and mostly Emacs, which has long been a recommended path for closures. Uh, historically, it's like, oh, you want to try closure, use Emacs. And so, I think it's now it's, oh, you want to try closure, use Calva has has become a thing or your favorite editor that you already know and love, right? Yeah, if you don't if you don't have a strong affinity, >> use Calva. So, and VS Code. >> I just want to point out that Cursive does have a community uh version of it. It does not cost money if you're just using it for your personal choice. >> But then Intelligj still costs money to purchase it in the first place. >> No, there's there's a community edition of that as well, I think. >> Okay. So so long as you're within the community then community you're not using it for commercial development then you can kind >> yeah there something like that I don't know the the details but but I know that if if you're curious about uh closure and and intelligj is your choice there is no money that automatically comes to question it's it's a there's a community >> yeah and then another analysis that could be done is adjacency too. You could look at for example cotlin developers I intel there's a huge contingent of cotlin developers who use intelligj right and so I I think we have the options of segmenting some of this data and finding interesting things but that's a tbd >> for [laughter] sure >> there's still a lot of work we need to put into uh calva to to actually remove um barriers So yeah, I just want to put that in as well. It's it we're not at all finished uh with it. It's uh there are a lot of things uh we could do there and at the closure cons we talked a bit about it and I I got to realize that that for Calva to better represent Rich's Hickeyy's idea about how it should be to get started with it we actually need to tweak a few things as well and I think that will be become a much better experience. experience >> definitely for sure like like there's a smoothing out that can happen and I do want to say that cursive has been around for a long time it is much loved it is a it is a great experience with closure and so I certainly am not trying to make this um like reasons why adopting cursive is hard but we're just trying to understand this shift and um and so I both with these ecosystems every ecosystem kind of has its own barriers to adopting it. And um and so it's just been very interesting to see that that the shift has mainly been between Emacs and and Calva as opposed to seeing a big structural shift in the other ones. >> I do think a lot of times it was like you want to use you want to learn closure, you need to learn Emacs. I think that was the they were tied together and I think by far the most the the best experience was in Emacs and so I think that's probably one of the reasons why it's so over represented and so I think it's just a uh a shift in the the recommendation. Yeah. [clears throat] >> So that was the case when I started using closure >> uh it was like Emacs was the best experience. my my colleagues were using Emacs and everything. I was using Bim >> and uh so I didn't get that Emacs the cider experience uh really from it was Firebase. I don't know what what it was. It it was very cool and very good but it was not the same like integrated uh experience. So that's actually what where that's why Calva is named Calva because it's distilled from cider. Sorry, that was my that was my >> Oh, nice. >> I do think the the like the fact that a lot of the cool EMAC stuff is now in Closure LSP which is all for all editors. So there's a lot of the magic that was built in has kind of been democratized. So it's it's less >> attractive >> um or less the reason why you know. So anyway, >> yeah, it's yeah, it's actually you can open up any editor and have a lot of of the things there just you just plug in closure LSP and a pores, >> right? >> Uh closure closure support. So that's very that's a very good point. >> Yeah, there's been shifting away from uh Emac specific tooling being the center of gravity >> and that's moved into more cross editor tools and and other options. And and speaking of Closure LSP, we've been mentioning a lot. We've been mentioning Calva and of course Peter, we have you here, but Closure LSP and a number of projects. So it kind of in closing because we're up, we've been talking for a while. In closing for this session here and let again let us know if you like this, if you want to hear more. We would love to do this again. um in the survey. So about 44% of the people who took the survey took some time to thank somebody. And I don't have the numbers right in front of me. I I took all the open responses and I ran it through an LLM to try to kind of extract out mentions. And so somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 different people, just under 200 distinct people [laughter] who were thanked, which is incredible. And some people obviously are more visible in the community. They get lots of mentions. I know Peter, you got lots of mentions and and things like that. But somewhere around 200 different people, a little under, were thanked. And I just think that is so neat. there's this this great appreciation of the work that other people do in the closure community. And this is at the end of a a fairly long survey. We try to make it shorter optional parts. >> This is question 59. [laughter] >> Yes. Yes. >> Yeah. It actually actually um uh drew me like when I saw the number I saw the number like 79 people had answered this question something like that I think I was like how many were that like answered the the questionnaire and then I realized it was almost half of the people answering that had answered this question and that and I also saw in among among their questions that a lot of people even though the the framing of the question is like mention someone uh a lot of people just like mention the the community as such and I think that's why you see these 200 different distinct people uh being mentioned because it is it is very special uh with a helpful community like that like so everyone is coming in touch with the community and got help from someone. Uh and it it's not like it's it's not like it's just like three four people that help other people. There are a few people that are helping more than uh like almost work at at the Slack. Uh but but uh everyone is very helpful. So I can I can I can see why like >> everyone come in in there. So that guy helped me so I will mention will mention him or uh that guy helped me. So I will mention her. So I think it that's very cool u and a tribute to to that uh it's not only closure that is that is done right. I think the closure community is done right as well. If if I were to take once again I don't have it in front of me but based on my recollection if I were to take a broad sweep the people who get thanked the most like the most frequently are people who have either highly visible roles in the community or or have um highly visible projects >> popular projects. But then when you start getting in the longtail you have people who have just been incredibly helpful in so many different ways. And so it's it's sort of this u uh power law type thing where there's this long tale of individuals. And so I uh Peter, I love I love your point like so many people are so helpful. >> Yeah. >> And so many people have helped so many other people. there's there's just this culture of of helping and and being friendly and and you're seeing that show up in this this wide gamut of people who are thankful. Mhm. I think I think when you find something that does make things more fun, u you want to share it with others and when someone has a difficulty with it, you don't take it personally, but you go, "Oh, well, if they if I can just help them unlock this one little thing, they'll they'll have fun, too." Like, I think there's a there's a a self-replicating part to it. Um so we've attracted great people but also I think the technology itself is something that people just organically want to share and want to help out others with you know and it's always interesting to me how programming languages programming language communities uh like Python, Rust, Pearl, PHP like as I say these names I in my mind I can think of that kind of that way that that community is And you know whatever it is, sometimes it comes from the leader, sometimes it comes from, you know, prominent members in the community, but you can see that the general thing is of great gratitude. I mean, we have a gratitude emoji in our Slack that a lot of people use like that's I don't that's anywhere else. So anyway, I think there's a lot to be said there. There are even a few more slacks now because I have copied it to other slacks but [laughter] I found it in was Kora I think that uh introduced it in on on our Slack and >> attitude channel as well was very cool >> and so um all three of us were mentioned in this list of long names. So I I'm curious to ask a personal question. What does that mean to to you personally? Well, I can go start on that. It it means so much. I mean, it's it's some of the the the mentions I have in there. I mean, they almost make me cry. It's it's um it's amazing like like something I have done uh whether it's Calva itself or just help someone where people or like find so much um value in that. It makes me happy. [snorts] >> Yeah, I echo those words. I feel like there's the someone told me a long time ago that joy when you share joy it doubles. it doesn't it's not share it's not zero sum and um and so it makes me it just makes me so happy and joyful that to know that someone else benefited um also it amazes me that people listen to you know listen to all the stuff that we've said um uh and um and so anyway I'm I'm grateful for the opportunity it's it's uh it's one of the highlights of my life so >> yeah you two guys are like my mentors so [laughter] listen, please. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, I I go first I kind of I'm surprised like oh >> because um I I don't know I'm plugging away, you know, just I'm really focused on the mission. Uh I'm focused on mission and um but then and then it sort of sinks in and I just really appreciate it. Uh I just thank you. Thanks to everyone so much for um taking some time to fill out the survey, but but thank people including including us three. >> Yeah. >> Um it's just been great and we would love to hear more from you uh in the comments in Closure and Slack. >> Um or you can come hang out in the closure Reddit or in the Closure Zulip. All of those are pretty popular places for people to hang out or we're there. And um but if you if you like what you're hearing here, let us know and we can do more of it. And I of course would am always available to chat and feel free to send me your comments and thoughts and DMs on on the survey and the state of closure in general, too. And anyway, Nate and Peter, thank you so much for letting me borrow some of your time. [laughter] >> Thanks for having me. Thanks for the invite. >> Steal some of your time. [laughter] >> It's It's been a pleasure to I mean, of course, I know Kristoff for many many years, but it's nice to actually interact with you uh in video, uh Peter. That's >> I've heard lots of good things and it's been a pleasure. So, thank you both. >> Thank you both. That's great. >> Yes. Thank you. And um we'll we'll talk again soon.

The results for the 2025 State of Clojure Community survey are in, and Christoph Neumann (Clojure Developer Advocate) sits down with Peter "PEZ" Strömberg (Calva) and Nate Jones (Functional Design in Clojure podcast) to talk about the results. They discuss where Clojure is being used around the world, what’s surprising about that, and what that says about how functional programming spreads. They dig into the experience level of the community, who Clojure attracts, how Clojure fits in with other languages, and just how much some developers love Clojure. They finish with what really matters in the Clojure community. Full results: https://clojure.org/news/2026/02/18/state-of-clojure-2025 Calva: https://calva.io/ Functional Design in Clojure: https://clojuredesign.club/