Use Clojure/Script because it's a competitive advantage. If Cognitect went under, my company http://www.hyperfiddle.net/ would still use Clojure/Script and we would, quite frankly, maintain it ourselves, because it really is that important to us. De-risking dependence on any one company is half the point of open source.
I'm also interested in the proper way to fund open source, coordinating donations and putting them to effective use is harder than it sounds, it seems to me the easiest way for me to give someone money is for them to sell me something.
Totally. The closure compiler, despite it's age, is the best Javascript optimizer/uglifier out there. Nothing else comes close. There are several top notch, maintained frameworks as well (re-frame/om)
Sometimes I get the impression that other transpiled langs have npm + decent minification + decent non-minified compiled size, etc without having to wait for years.
Of course, this can be changed (and Clojurists Together can be instrumental)!
The npm ecosystem is absolutely massive, but 99.999% of it is irrelevant for most frontend development.
All that said, clojurescript is not necessarily the best choice for any given org. Mostly just saying there's nothing regarding the ecosystem that should hold you back.
The advantage is best-in-class dead code elimination, which is also why Closure was chosen; to distill the CLojurescript standard library into just the parts needed for a web page requires good DCE. Recently, other Js projects like Rollup and Webpack have gotten good DCE, but when Clojurescript was started, there were no other serious contenders.
Reason still seems to be in high flux?
* Sadly JVM-Clojure interop is not used as Rich envisioned, neither technically (we use wrapper libs!) or socially (we create Clojure projects from scratch rather than 'hijack' enterprise Java projects)
* Don't know much about Reason. But in general I get the impression other JS communities don't have the same headaches as us (maybe at the cost of some complexity)
Clojure is a great bunch of ideas. But ideas also need continuous grunt work and refinement.
And finally, IME most programmers will take 'Easy' over 'Simple'. Which is why other new langs seem to have all the fun, and more jobs.
Another example: Kotlin. It did in 1 year what Clojure didn't in 10.
A healthy ecosystem has a compound effect (like a feedback loop), which can result in a greater abundance of Clojure jobs.
Thankfully Clojure doesn't need to be 'saved' (it's a timeless idea!), but well I often read complaints around its job market and open source ecosystem.
As an example, say you get some VC funding. Can you absolutely trust Clojure(Script) and its tooling? How well will non-senior hires perform? I for one would be tempted to go for something with more traction like Elixir + Reason.
I adore Clojure and all that, but in the end details matter, especially under budget/time constraints.
Of course, this is a (perceived) situation we can change.