But ok, if mutability is always worse, why not use a pure language then? No more cowardly swap! and transient data structures or sending messages back and forth like in Erlang.
But then you get to monads (otherwise you'd end up with Elm and I'd like to see Apple's payment backend written in Elm), monad transformers, arrows and the like and coincidentally that's when many Clojure programmers start whining about "jumping through unnecessary hoops" :D
Anyway, this was just a private observation I've reached after being an FP zealot for a decade, all is good, no need to convert me, Clojure is cool :)
Clojure is not "cool". Matter of fact, for a novice it may look distasteful, it really does. Ask anyone with a prior programming experience - Python, JS, Java to read some Clojure code for the first time and they start cringing.
What Clojure actually is - it is "down to earth PL", it values substance over marketing, prioritizes developers happiness in the long run - which comes in a spectrum; it doesn't pretend everyone wants the same thing. A junior can write useful code quickly, while someone who wants to dive into FP theory can. Both are first-class citizens.
There's no such thing as "perfect" for everyone and for every case.
> feels like jumping through unnecessary hoops for little gain really.
I dunno what you're talking about - Apple runs their payment backend; Walmart their billing system; Cisco their cybersec stack; Netflix their social data analysis; Nubank empowers entire Latin America - they all running Clojure, pushing massive amounts of data through it.
I suppose they just have shitload of money and can afford to go through "unnecessary hoops". But wait, why then tons of smaller startups running on Clojure, on Elixir? I guess they just don't know any better - stupid fucks.