And we can look forward to Jank https://jank-lang.org/

Yes, although if one cares about Jank, they can also use a traditional Common Lisp or Scheme compiler, if compatibility with existing Clojure code isn't a requirement.

Things have surely happened and the language has improved, but would you consider any of this to be innovative?

Hmm. I'm not sure what you are looking for — myself, I write software that supports my living, and I'm not looking for thrills. What I get with Clojure is new concepts every couple of years or so, thought through and carefully implemented by people much smarter than me, in a way that doesn't break anything. This lets me concentrate on my work and deliver said software that supports my living. And pay the bills.

Babashka is definitely innovative and useful

Agreed, that is huge for the ecosystem. I have a side project actually that has a unified codebase: central library and api server in clj, and the cli client is babashka.

> would you consider any of this to be innovative?

JS got optional chaining, nullish coalescing, async/await, decorators, pattern matching proposals - all borrowed from other languages. Python got type hints (borrowed), structural pattern matching (borrowed from ML/Haskell), walrus operator. Rust got async/await (borrowed). Go got generics (very late, borrowed from everywhere).

Almost every "feature addition" in any mainstream language since roughly 2010 is a synthesis or import from prior art - usually from ML, Haskell, Lisp, or Smalltalk lineages. Comparatively, there's been quite some good amount of innovation in Clojure-sphere. Anyone who ever tried Hyperfiddle/electric, generated tests based on Specs or Malli, or even used nbb for scripting - knows that.

So let's either apply pressure everywhere equally, or nowhere. What's your point of singling out Clojure? Are you asking for a higher standard being applied because of Clojure's stated philosophy (simplicity and careful design, etc.), or this is a proxy complaint about something else?