This is precisely what I pictured for clojure when reading fogus' post on scala. Coming from a java background with no lisp experience I did not find clojure syntax "difficult". Any difficulty was, as Alex noted, in not doing things the imperative way. If anything, the fact that the language got out of my way allowed me to focus on writing functional programs.
It's also worth noting that learning new ways to solve problems is fun; learning reams of new syntax is not. It's for this reason that I became frustrated when trying to learn scala after working in clojure for a while.
>It's also worth noting that learning new ways to solve problems is fun; learning reams of new syntax is not.
This is very true. Clojure was the first functional language I learned, and it was actually a ton of fun have to figure out basic things (like writing the fibonacci sequence) in a functional style. Also, Clojure introduced me to concepts I hadn't learned about with my bit of Java experience and moderate Python experience, such as lazy sequences, tail call recursion (and way more recursion in general), STM, and macros. Even though I don't write clojure very often (and not as much as I would like to), I'm still glad I took the time to learn the language just because it introduced me to so many new concepts.
It's also worth noting that learning new ways to solve problems is fun; learning reams of new syntax is not. It's for this reason that I became frustrated when trying to learn scala after working in clojure for a while.