A better source: 2024 survey analysis (and results): https://clojure.org/news/2024/12/02/state-of-clojure-2024

  - 2024 Highlights
  - Trends Over Time
  - 2024 New Users
  - Previous Results

Now... If we are pointing out isolated facts to make an argument, I would caution that survey popularity (sensitive to timing, duration, outreach etc.) is less telling---and less statistically significant---than isolated facts like this:

> Clojure versions

> Clojure 1.12.0 was released in September 2024 and the survey showed rapid uptake, with 58% already using it, and 65% developing or deploying with the prior versions 1.11, and a steep drop-off after that. Clojure’s focus on stability and avoiding breaking changes makes upgrades safe and easy.

> Trends (use at work, hobby, and study have all up-trended)

> https://clojure.org/news/2024/12/02/state-of-clojure-2024#tr...

> Because this survey has been running since 2010 (thanks to Chas Emerick originally!), we have lots of great longitudinal data and it’s interesting to compare some of the answers over time.

> Looking at the question of how Clojure developers use Clojure, we can see this has generally trended more towards using it at work. However, this year we saw an uptick of people using it for hobbies or in their studies:

Everything you quoted is based on percentages of the responders, not absolute numbers. Changing in-group proportions don't say anything about overall usage. E.g., if responder work usage goes up 10%, but 40% fewer people use Clojure, that's still a drop in absolute numbers.

Look for the number of responses, and you can see a decline each year after 2020.

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It's possible that the survey may not have been advertised as well, but afaik, it's still posted the same way it always was: announcements on Clojurians, Clojureverse, reddit, etc. I haven't heard of any reason that survey numbers would have been artificially depressed for several years running.

Absolute survey responses are a signal, I don't deny that. But they aren't enough to make the generalisation you are making.

Fair, but I also mentioned Google Trends.

Or, I picked a random, reasonably popular library to check on Clojars: http-kit. The most recent stable release, 2.8.0, which came out last year, has only been downloaded ~600k times. 2.7.0 from 2023 was downloaded ~1.4m times. 2.6.0 from 2022 was dled ~2m times. Ditto for 2.5.3 from 2021.

I would have used Clojure itself, but I can't find maven dl statistics.

https://clojars.org/http-kit/versions/2.8.0 https://clojars.org/http-kit/versions/2.7.0 https://clojars.org/http-kit/versions/2.6.0 https://clojars.org/http-kit/versions/2.5.3

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The thing is, I've been seeing little pieces of evidence all over that Clojure is waning, and not much that it's genuinely increasing in popularity. Any individual example doesn't weigh that much, true, but everything seems in the same direction.

If people want Clojure to grow, whether because they need job opportunities, a big employee pool, whatever, it starts with a clear assessment of where it's at.

Note that newer things are always downloaded less because they have been around less time (lots of people continue using old versions).

Maven stats are available to artifact deployers, but they are useless for estimating users or community size as downloads are largely from CI servers constantly downloading artifacts for testing. Download numbers are large and seesaw erratically. Unique IP counts are a little more stable but also inflated beyond relevance by CI.

I agree with your critiques, but I still don't think it negates the overall picture I see.

When I was a scientist, we were trained to look at the overall body of evidence when trying to assess a claim. Any individual study has flaws, but when we survey the literature as a whole, do we see many studies confirming a finding? Independent studies presumably don't share the same set of flaws (usually), and the more studies demonstrating something, the more likely it is to be true.

And I just haven't heard any counter-evidence. Are job postings increasing or decreasing? What's the change in MAU for Clojurians? Etc.

I looked for job/social media numbers, but it's hard to get those numbers. If you have better data, I'd love to see it.

All of those other things you listed, while important, are second and third-order side effects that are harder to control directly.

I need a tool that helps with problem-solving and product development, and works reliably and effectively across a wide range of use cases, from basic mobile apps to high-performance computing.

Clojure delivers that better than any other language or ecosystem that I know of in a uniform, well-designed package, all the way from the core internals of the language to deps.edn.

People are busy getting stuff done. Many people don't visit forums if they don't have issues, aren't looking for jobs, aren't offering jobs etc.

Yes, doing Clojure is more demanding initially than many other languages where you can basically template/ LLM your way to anything. With Clojure you might find it easier to do bigger and longer term projects that are rather easy to maintain even for a single person or a small team. That of course doesn't cause much buzz, because it's boring in the good sense.

The absolute number of survey respondents is not a good proxy for community size - the survey runs at different times of the year, for different lengths of time, and with different amounts of marketing. The only goal with the survey is to get a representative sample size. We have other sources of data, both public and private, that are better indicators and indicate the community size is likely growing at this time.

Hi Alex, if you have data that supports a positive Clojure growth narrative please publish it so that I and other consultants/influencers can share the good news in support of our shared mission. The perception of the decline of Clojure is becoming a board-level conversation at unicorn/ish size companies that are or were all-on on Clojure.