And Clojure isn't misused more than anything else. In fact, I've got a feeling it's less so.

The difference is just that you can scapegoat it, and people will believe you.

You can't blame Java for the failure of your project, cause everybody knows Java has worked fine for so many other teams, but nobody knows Clojure, so you can blame it for all your failures and people gives you the benefit of the doubt.

When you have a bad code base, and it's Java, people blame the people who wrote the code. When you have a bad code base and it's Clojure, people blame Clojure. Go figure!

I have mentioned a few times in the past, on HN and Reddit and elsewhere, that my biggest personal dream language wishlist item is “Clojure but with static types”, however, while that’s something I dream of having, it hasn’t held me or the language back in any meaningful way. The thing that makes Clojure less mess-inducing in my opinion is largely the fact that it’s data is immutable by default. An immutable-Python would be something I’d be interested in trying.