Clojure is a lisp and a lisp is rarely just another language.
If you don't know lisp or you don't want to know why you should know lisp, go take Scala or Haskell or Python. If, however, you do know—or you're willing to read a handful of Paul Graham's essays on lisp—let's continue:
Most importantly, Clojure is a lisp that is 1) not a toy, 2) not too standalone without a supported platform, and 3) not Common Lisp.
1) Most lisps are toys. It is logical because lisps are fun, profound, and nearly everyone (out of a certain demographic) has written a few. Then there are various Common Lisps, Scheme lisps, Emacs Lisp, and then few others that come as a part of some fairly important software library, and those aren't toys but usable at least in some specific environments. Clojure is a full-blown language that has actual development history past the "gee, i think this is going to be interesting" phase.
2) libraries and compatibility are so important these days. The Python language is gold because it has a fairly extensive standard library and bindings to nearly everything, even if it isn't a lisp. Most lisps have marginal effect and impact because they are so disconnected from the 2000's state of affairs. They're only drawn from the chambers and wielded in superimportant projects where the cost of building a suitable environment to host the lisp system is negligible to the actual problem to be solved.
3) Common Lisp was a good, practical, multi-paradigm lisp by the 80's standards. (Ok, path abstraction could've just worked everywhere right from the start.) But the technology ship has sailed 15 years ago and CL wasn't on it. So far, Common Lisp has been the best we lispers have got. But now that there's Clojure, it doesn't matter we lispers weren't on the ship because with Clojure we just got a jet flight to fifteen years in the future. And I don't think we even saw the ship sailing below during our flight.
If you don't know lisp or you don't want to know why you should know lisp, go take Scala or Haskell or Python. If, however, you do know—or you're willing to read a handful of Paul Graham's essays on lisp—let's continue:
Most importantly, Clojure is a lisp that is 1) not a toy, 2) not too standalone without a supported platform, and 3) not Common Lisp.
1) Most lisps are toys. It is logical because lisps are fun, profound, and nearly everyone (out of a certain demographic) has written a few. Then there are various Common Lisps, Scheme lisps, Emacs Lisp, and then few others that come as a part of some fairly important software library, and those aren't toys but usable at least in some specific environments. Clojure is a full-blown language that has actual development history past the "gee, i think this is going to be interesting" phase.
2) libraries and compatibility are so important these days. The Python language is gold because it has a fairly extensive standard library and bindings to nearly everything, even if it isn't a lisp. Most lisps have marginal effect and impact because they are so disconnected from the 2000's state of affairs. They're only drawn from the chambers and wielded in superimportant projects where the cost of building a suitable environment to host the lisp system is negligible to the actual problem to be solved.
3) Common Lisp was a good, practical, multi-paradigm lisp by the 80's standards. (Ok, path abstraction could've just worked everywhere right from the start.) But the technology ship has sailed 15 years ago and CL wasn't on it. So far, Common Lisp has been the best we lispers have got. But now that there's Clojure, it doesn't matter we lispers weren't on the ship because with Clojure we just got a jet flight to fifteen years in the future. And I don't think we even saw the ship sailing below during our flight.