Clay seems to understand that you cannot compromise.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but having had no experience with Clay this statement fills me with dread. Care to elaborate?
Edit: ah, I see elsewhere you've defined what you mean by "no compromises." Still, I'd be interested in hearing what makes Clay the front-runner in this field if you care to tell. :)
Clay seems to have a lot of potential in the systems programming space. The language is still in a bit of flux, but it's the first C alternative that still has me excited after using it (which can't be said for C++, D, Go, or Rust).
The folks in #clay on freenode are very friendly and helpful. You can tell that they've been keeping up with advances in PLT but that they also understand the kinds of low-level things systems programmers need to do.
I leave it to your Google skills to get the cultural context for that. :)