While it's true that you need to turn things like a NodeList from js into a clj seq you don't need to write these utilities yourself; clj->js and js->clj can both be found in cljs core:
https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/src/clj...
In ClojureScript Compiler Compiled with ClojureScriptclojure
clojurescript
Clojure2011–2026
clojure / clojurescript
clojurescript
Clojure to JS compiler
74Distinct people
88Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
9.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Clojure to JS compiler
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
I love this trend of building compilers for existing languages that target Javascript. Other 2 languages with fully functional Javascript compilers that are worth checking out:…
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year88 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-07-20 23:29:35 UTC to 2026-03-08 18:00:50 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 4 | 9 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 16 | 1 | 15 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 22 | 4 | 18 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 1 | 7 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
What is ClojureScript?
ClojureScript is a compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript. It is designed to emit JavaScript code which is compatible with the advanced compilation mode of the Google Closure optimizing compiler.
Official web site: https://clojurescript.org
Releases and dependency information
Latest stable release: 1.12.145
All released versions
Clojure deps.edn dependency information:
org.clojure/clojurescript {:mvn/version "1.12.145"}
Leiningen dependency information:
[org.clojure/clojurescript "1.12.145"]
Maven dependency information:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.clojure</groupId>
<artifactId>clojurescript</artifactId>
<version>1.12.145</version>
</dependency>
Getting Started
Read the Quick Start guide.
Read the Documentation.
Try a tutorial.
Companies using ClojureScript
Questions, Feedback?
Please point all of your questions and feedback to the
Clojure mailing list. There
is a community run
ClojureScript user mailing list and
the IRC channel, #clojurescript on freenode.net, is quite active.
There is also a community run Slack channel. The
Jira bug/feature tracking application is located at
https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/CLJS. Before submitting issues
please read the
Reporting Issues
page first.
Developers Welcome
ClojureScript operates under the same license as Clojure. All
contributors must have a signed CA (Contributor's Agreement) and
submit their patch via the appropriate channels. If you're interested
in contributing to the project, please see the
contributing page on
clojure.org. For more information about working
on the compiler and testing check the
Developer section of the wiki.
YourKit
YourKit has given an open source license for their profiler, greatly simplifying the profiling of ClojureScript performance.
YourKit supports open source projects with its full-featured Java Profiler.
YourKit, LLC is the creator of YourKit Java Profiler
and YourKit .NET Profiler,
innovative and intelligent tools for profiling Java and .NET applications.
License
Copyright (c) Rich Hickey. All rights reserved. The use and
distribution terms for this software are covered by the Eclipse
Public License 1.0 (https://opensource.org/license/epl-1-0/)
which can be found in the file epl-v10.html at the root of this
distribution. By using this software in any fashion, you are
agreeing to be bound by the terms of this license. You must
not remove this notice, or any other, from this software.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
16 sourcesThere are already implementations of Clojure and Haskell that target JavaScript, but I'm not sure if that's what you meant. I don't know if there are any implementations that target JS using this specific approach but I don't think it's one to necessarily emulate; as nostrademons points out it is interesting, but not really optimal.
https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem
https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...
In Brython - Python to Javascript translatorSo something like Clojure, but that runs on the CLR and Javascript as well?
CLR - https://github.com/richhickey/clojure-clr
JS - https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript
Python - https://github.com/halgari/clojure-py
Lua - https://github.com/raph-amiard/clojurescript-lua
C - https://github.com/schani/clojurec
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
In The Nature of LispAnd https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki for the ClojureScript site-ish.
In The State of JavaScript - Brendan EichHave you taken a look at clojurescript? It is a very mature project that lets you use lisp in the browser: https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript
In Cell: Lisp in JavascriptClojureScript's core library has a dependency on Google Closure, and are optimized with knowledge of javascript vms. david nolen said that v8, for example, is blazingly fast at sequential instructions so they take great care to avoid function calls in critical paths.
here's some discussion that alludes to performance concerns in js vms: http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJS-284
here's the original commit for PersistentVector, note how low level the code is: https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/commit/e615f4cd326e...
here's more discusson by david nolen: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!searchin/clojur...
more discussion about allowing low level code access to js-specific special forms for numerics: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!searchin/clojur...
In Clojure ObscuraSome of my favourites -
* Enlive, a HTML scraping & templating library implemented on top of DOM parsing & state machines https://github.com/cgrand/enlive
* Core Logic, a Prolog-like logic programming library https://github.com/clojure/core.logic
* The ClojureScript compiler, a Clojure compiler that targets JavaScript https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/src/clj...
* Ring, a Rack/WSGI like web-app library https://github.com/mmcgrana/ring
* Midje a very powerful test framework https://github.com/marick/Midje
* Carmine, a Redis client lib in Pure Clojure https://github.com/ptaoussanis/carmine/
[EDIT] Added Midje, Ring.
In Ask HN: Clojure code worth reading?The Activity on ClojureScript is Phenomenal
2 points · Open discussionSo what is it like trying to debug something you've written in clojurescript? Regardless of the backend target language, it seems so disconnected. Is there a REPL for clojurescript?
EDIT: answered my own question about the repl: https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki/The-REPL-and-E...
In ClojureScript Lua backendI don't know if the initial announcement still applies today; but I think ClojureScript encourages using Google Closure library for DOM manipulation and event handling[1]:
> The ClojureScript compiler emits JavaScript which follows Google Closure's code conventions, and then invokes the Google Closure compiler to generate compact, optimized JavaScript for delivery to clients. ClojureScript also makes use of the Google Closure library for capabilities such as event handling, DOM manipulation, and user interface widgets.
> It is possible to use ClojureScript with JavaScript libraries other than Google Closure, but those libraries typically do not follow the conventions of the Google Closure compiler and therefore will not be able to take full advantage of its optimizations.
They even have few wrappers to Google Closure Library under the `cl
Read the rest
ojure.browser` namespace[1] (although from my testing, some of them, such as `clojure.browser.event`, is not compatible with ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS.)
[1]: http://clojure.com/blog/2011/07/22/introducing-clojurescript...
[2]: https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/tree/master/src/clj...
If you're starting out, I would recommend Clojure first. ClojureScript is basically the same language, although there are large pieces missing (since JS is single-threaded the only managed reference supported is atom, there is less support for runtime reflection like docstrings and exploring namespaces dynamically) but right now things are a bit rough around the edges, although they are getting better rapidly (see: ClojureScript One). It's just that when you get stuck with some issue with ClojureScript (like a browser connected REPL barfing on you or debugging the JS that comes out of the ClojureScript/Google Closure compiler, or understanding how macros work) I think it really helps to have a solid grasp of Clojure. See this for more details, although it might not mean much to someone new to Clojure: https://github.com/clojure/clojurescr
Read the rest
ipt/wiki/Differences-fr...
That being said, if you have some desire to experiment with alternatives to JS in the environments that is has traditionally been the only choice, ClojureScript is a compelling alternative, and ClojureScript One is an absolutely fantastic place to start. I have really enjoyed working with it and with ClojureScript in general, and huge props are deserved to those making it a better experience, because it's come a long way very fast.
Honestly, this can actually be a PITA to set up for vanilla ClojureScript apps because the order of steps is very important, and one of the rad things about ClojureScript One for beginners (myself included) is that it's seems much easier to get working, so if you're not an Emacs user to begin with, I would clone ClojureScript One and follow along to try it out. There are some nice scripts and Clojure code meant for dev-time that come with it that smooth out the edges a bit.
But in general, you have to set up your inferior-lisp-program in Emacs with the shell script desribed here: https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki/Emacs-%26-infe... (for ClojureScript One, it suffices to use "lein repl" as your inf-lisp.)
Then you need to (:require [clojure.browser.repl :as repl) in your ns, and run (repl/repl "http://localhost:9000 ") (there's
Read the rest
a space here to prevent HN from swallowing the close-quote, but it shouldn't be there) at the beginning of your ClojureScript app.
Start the REPL in Emacs (M-x inferior-lisp RET, ie press Alt-x, type "inferior-lisp", hit return) and then open the browser and point it at your app. Test it by typing (js/alert) in Emacs. Then, when you're in a ClojureScript buffer (or any Lisp buffer, I think) C-x C-e will send the form before the point to the REPL, which is actually connected to the browser.
I'll leave setting it up for Vim as an exercise for the reader (kidding, kind of, I just don't have any idea if any one has worked on this yet, although there are Vim modes for regular Clojure, so maybe)
Someone has already achieved Clojure. https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript
In Why we need Python in the BrowserYou can use Clojurescript on top of Node.js to achieve that. I never tried it so I don't have first hand experience.
https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki
In Clojure implemented on top of PythonNo, there's a very sizable and useful ClojureScript standard library:
https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/src/clj...
... the idea is that the parts of it you don't use will be optimized away by the Google Closure Compiler.
In Comparing JavaScript, CoffeeScript & ClojureScriptShowing the 15 most recent of 16 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.