You're stated opinion seems to be that Clojure is playing catch-up, not that it is the beginning of something better.
Also, as someone who uses Red & Clojure, I'm curious why you think it's more powerful?
I would compare Parse, Red's most notable feature, with core.match from Clojure.
Not really, it was about Zygomys, Clojure did it thing long time ago and proved it has something to offer, like STM in the core of language.
>I would compare Parse, Red's most notable feature, with core.match from Clojure.
I don't know the internals of core.match, but can it change rules in runtime like this?
red>> rule1: ['a]
== ['a]
red>> changer: [(append rule1 [| 'b])]
== [(append rule1 [| 'b])]
red>> parse [a a b b] [any rule1 [number! changer | ] any rule1]
== false
red>> parse [a a 1 b b] [any rule1 [number! changer | ] any rule1]
== true
Clojure is crazy about immutability, so it makes live modifying any variable painful.
However, core.match is usually used with a loop, so it should be possible with some nested lets.
Not only compares, it does extend many things which Lisp failed to do when it became unpopular.
>But Clojure, for example, is actually popular enough that places use it for real work, today
Yes, and this is very good, because it gives many people idea that programming may be much better than they used to. My position here is that Clojure is only the beginning.