Clojure in Product. Would you do it again?

Episode 12 of "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?" is live — Marcin Maicki, Global Data Developer & Lead Developer at Dentons, joins Artem Barmin and Vadym Kostiuk to talk about running Clojure inside a large, decentralized enterprise.
Highlights:
- Marcin’s Clojure origin story: started with ClojureScript, moved into Clojure, and found the functional mindset a natural fit coming from React.
- How Clojure landed at Dentons: a conscious choice for a focused referral‑network venture that valued expressiveness and small teams.
- Practical stack and ops: Postgres, Elasticsearch, Reagent/Re‑frame + Material UI, Metabase; Marcin also works on PySpark/Databricks in his global data role.
- Maintenance and risk: why they’re migrating away from old, unmaintained libs; regular security scans and external testing make dependency health a real concern.
- Team, onboarding, and hiring: a small Clojure pod (Marcin + one dev, testers, DevOps); knowledge sharing, docs, and close pairing are the onboarding tools — hiring remains the main practical blocker.
- Enterprise realities: polycentric org structure, integration friction with firm standards (Power BI, Azure), and the tradeoffs that make Clojure a strong fit in some contexts but a harder sell in others.
Watch Episode 12 to hear the full conversation and the nuances of keeping a nine‑year Clojure codebase healthy in a corporate setting.

In the 11th episode of "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?", Artem Barmin and Vadym Kostiuk speak with Jeremiah Via, Staff Software Engineer at The New York Times. Jeremiah describes how Clojure was introduced and adopted across the search stack at a major media organization, and why JVM interop and practical tooling made it the right choice for their data-processing workloads.
Our conversation walks through concrete topics: Jeremiah’s Clojure origin story, the iterative migration from PHP, Erlang, Python, and Java to JVM/Clojure services, and the search team’s day-to-day work, including how they push vector embeddings into Elasticsearch for AI features and performance.
We also dig into hiring and engineering practices: onboarding newcomers with an emphasis on functional thinking and REPL workflows, hiring for search/domain expertise over prior Clojure experience, maintaining code discipline, and addressing production concerns like memory sizing and performance tuning. As Jeremiah notes, "Now with AI stuff, people can be productive very fast without understanding it, using a cursor and tools like that," and he cautions that it remains to be seen how this will affect the deeper mental model of learning to think in Clojure.
We conclude with Jeremiah's response to a question from our previous guest, Cam Saul from Metabase.
Listen to our podcast and get more insights about Clojure in product: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast

Welcome to the 10th episode of our podcast, "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?", where Artem Barmin and Vadym Kostiuk speak with Cam Saul, Chief Architect at Metabase, an open-source business intelligence platform. In his role, Cam wears multiple hats, including reviewing architectural documents, managing developer tasks, and writing custom linters to ensure code quality.
We discuss the integral role of Clojure in Metabase's development and how transitioning from Python allowed the team to ship features much faster. Cam also shares insights into the blend of Clojure and JavaScript developers, highlighting the advantages of Clojure's stability, which enables the team to build upon existing work without the frequent changes seen in other programming environments.
The open-source foundation of Metabase has fostered a collaborative culture that attracts external contributors, some of whom joined the team after submitting valuable requests. Cam reflects on the journey of hiring Clojure developers, emphasizing the learning opportunities it provides. We conclude with Cam's thoughts on the Clojure community and his response to a question from our previous guest, Alexander Johannes from JustOn.
Worth your attention:
Fast in-product analytics: metabase.com
Freshcode Clojure Team: freshcodeit.com/services/clojure-development-company

In the 9th episode, we welcome Alexander Johannes, Head of Development at JustOn, a German fintech company specializing in developing Salesforce accounting solutions since 2010. We discuss the nuances of building software for the AppExchange marketplace and the significance of Clojure in niche markets.
What started as a hobbyist's passion for solving intriguing problems like parser development has evolved into the full integration of Clojure into the tech stack, laying the foundation for JustOn's current projects. As Alexander noted, "It opened up the possibilities to be faster and deliver something meaningful."
Learn how JustOn's development team, under Alexander's leadership, developed and maintained the backend in Clojure, including business logic, mass data transformation, and platform integrations. We also walked through a series of questions about project structuring, software testing, hiring practices, overengineering, and team culture. When asked, "Would you choose Clojure as the main tech stack for your next product?" Alexander confidently said, "I would say yes," emphasizing their experience as underdogs in a niche market and the advantages that Clojure provides compared to mainstream technologies like Java.
Listen to our podcast and get more insights about Clojure in product.

In the 8th episode, meet our guest Jereme Corrado, the former CTO of Mobot and a Clojure enthusiast since 2016. Jereme shares his extensive programming journey, emphasizing the importance of quality engineering and the challenges and rewards of adopting Clojure.
Clojure acts as a filter for hiring skilled developers genuinely interested in the language. We discussed the same idea in the 3rd episode: when interviewing seasoned Clojure developers, you can always learn something new. This aspect is critical in building a strong engineering team, especially in startup environments.
Jereme describes successful projects he has worked on, how Clojure popped up on his radar, and how he introduced it to the team. Listen to this episode to know if Clojure matters and what unique strengths and weaknesses it represents.
Worth your attention:
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: https://web.mit.edu/6.001/6.037/sicp.pdf
Clojure Yetibot: https://yetibot.com
Freshcode Clojure team: https://www.freshcodeit.com/services/clojure-development-company