Clojure (/ˈkloʊʒər/, like closure)[17][18] is a dynamic and functional dialect of the programming language Lisp on the Java platform.

[21][17] Clojure's reader supports literal syntax for maps, sets, and vectors along with lists, and these are compiled to the mentioned structures directly.

At the end of this time, Hickey sent an email announcing the language to some friends in the Common Lisp community.

[18] Rich Hickey developed Clojure because he wanted a modern Lisp for functional programming, symbiotic with the established Java platform, and designed for concurrency.

[24][25][32][17] He has also stressed the importance of simplicity in programming language design and software architecture, advocating for loose coupling, polymorphism via protocols and type classes instead of inheritance, stateless functions that are namespaced instead of methods or replacing syntax with data.

[37] The community uses tools such as Clojure command-line interface (CLI)[38] or Leiningen for project automation, providing support for Maven integration.

As a Lisp dialect, Clojure supports functions as first-class objects, a read–eval–print loop (REPL), and a macro system.

While traditionally these functions operate on sequences, transducers allow them to work on channels and let the user define their own models for transduction.

The language has also been recommended by software developers such as Brian Goetz,[88][89][90] Eric Evans,[91][92] James Gosling,[93] Paul Graham,[94] and Robert C.

[95][96][97][98] ThoughtWorks, while assessing functional programming languages for their Technology Radar,[99] described Clojure as "a simple, elegant implementation of Lisp on the JVM" in 2010 and promoted its status to "ADOPT" in 2012.

[101] Clojure is used in industry by firms[102] such as Apple,[103][104] Atlassian,[105] Funding Circle,[106] Netflix,[107] Nubank,[108] Puppet,[109] and Walmart[110] as well as government agencies such as NASA.

[112] In the 2023 edition of Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Clojure was the fourth most admired in the category of programming and scripting languages, with 68.51% of the respondents who have worked with it last year saying they would like to continue using it.