How is it more direct to use loop? As someone who has been writing production clojure for nearly 5 years I usually only see loop macro used by devs coming from oop because that's a more comfortable pattern for them. I have rarely needed to use it.

As far as collections go, there's filter, remove, reduce, and various take functions. I don't see the deficiency.

Debugging is still an issue, but I personally don't find it too difficult... probably because I'm used to it.