There has been a lot of talk about Clojure lately, but many of the discussions have focused on individual features, such as macros, asynchronous programming and browser UI libraries. These features are great, but is that enough information to make the change to Lisp style syntax and a functional paradigm?

This talk will provide a big picture view, with examples of many of the features that make Clojure so powerful: Immutable values, powerful collection types, interop with Java or JavaScript, Go style channels, polymorphism, and being able to interact with running programs through a REPL. There will also be discussion of a number of pain points that can make it hard to get started with Clojure, and how to overcome them.