A common situation is that a mediocre Java programmers reads the first page of a clojure tutorial, finds out about list comprehensions and map and filter (probably not even fold) and decides he (yes almost always he) is a genius. A “good, wise” “engineer”.

Reality usually disagrees.

The reality of actually having to write a complete working system in a language in which your knowledge is limited to the first page of a tutorial is even harsher.

When your “wisdom” and “goodness” are up against a hard deadline, or even an interview, you get the confused messages in this thread that blame companies for not hiring you, people for it understanding you, everyone else for being stupid, and the world for your unemployment.

May be learn what you started with first, but well, and thence to expand your knowledge in various directions.

But of this fancy stuff is available in almost every language. If you think clojure is special you’re in a bad place. Hickey wrote clojure in java.

For the record, I don’t write java or clojure anymore, and if you think clojure gives you an advantage without knowing at least five other languages to a professional level, then you’re not getting hired anywhere near me...

Not to mention the incredibly useless hand dryers in half of UK pubs.

Dyson is the perfect example of how if you strike the right(???) note with your marketing you can sell any crap at a premium price.

Your German friend wants to see some miserable Russians? - go to the most expensive places in Western Europe - and those are the rich Russians. The others are just miserable by habit and because being non-miserable was bad style during the Soviet years. And yes, that probably applies to most of the Slavic nations (boo, generalisation, boo)...