lumo

It can, look at lumo: https://github.com/anmonteiro/lumo Its a ClojureScript compiler built in ClojureScript, which creates NodeJS targets. Self-Hosted ClojureScript's current downside is that it does not support as many of the ClojureScript libs. That said, the use of the JVM by ClojureScript is just as a build tool. Don't you already have Java installed on your computer anyways?

Is this the only big success story for Clojure or other companies using the Lisp family of programming languages? I know there is Paul Graham's Viaweb. [1] Does anyone know of other examples? I like the fact that they are a practical company, using Go when needed where "static dependency compilation and fast start-up are more important". I wonder if the ClojureScript's annoucement on integration of NodeJS modules [2] changes that? Also, Lumo [3] is definitely a move in the right direction for this, addressing the slow start-up times for Clojure/ClojureScript, making it suitable for shell scripts and CLI binaries. > Having a lingua franca also helps reduce overhead when engineers want to move between layers of the stack. The way I see it, Clojure allows you to use a single language and syntax from the super heavy backend stuffs, to the fro

It's really not though. ClojureScript runs on Node.js just fine, and you have stuff like Lumo https://github.com/anmonteiro/lumo for scripting, and even a full blown framework for web development https://macchiato-framework.github.io/ The main advantage of keeping Clojure hosted is in being able to leverage the host ecosystem. It's simply not practical to implement an ecosystem comparable to the JVM or Node from scratch, especially for a niche language.

Lumo (https://github.com/anmonteiro/lumo) or Planck may fit your requirements, though they lack a C FFI. They're based off ClojureScript/Javascript, and startup way faster than the JVM Clojure. Could probably try the node-ffi library with Lumo. There's the abandoned ClojureC project (https://github.com/schani/clojurec). There's also JVM-to-native compilers like gcj or ExcelsiorJet. But at the moment, it doesn't seem like there's an established way to do all that.

> I have to say, the only thing that annoys me about it occasionally is its marriage to the JVM. Clojurescript can be hosted entirely in js; here's a repl: https://github.com/anmonteiro/lumo/

Lumo[1] probably fits your use case perfectly. It's a ClojureScript REPL running in a NodeJS context. You have access to both bootstrap-ClojureScript-compatible libs as well as the whole NodeJS ecosystem. The REPL has some nice ergonomic features and comes with a TCP socket REPL you can use with Emacs inf-clojure and (I hear) Cursive. [1]: https://github.com/anmonteiro/lumo