I know this may not feel constructive but I'm going to say it anyway: the name of the language is a huge turnoff for me. I try to avoid janky things and use the word as a pejorative. It isn't that different to me than naming the language crap.
As far as I know, "jank" only has negative connotations, and a quick glance at the website did not provide an alternate interpretation of the name.
Also, if the author is looking for sponsors, some companies might be reluctant to be a proud sponsor of jank.
I have been following your project for a while but haven’t tried getting it installed on macOS yet. Clojure is a cool language and having a native code option is a nice contribution.
I also like the “Clojure like” language Hy, or hylang.
I’d be very curious how much interest is people looking to move to a Clojure from non Clojure code, and in those cases what domain they are working in (games?). And also how much is people in jvm Clojure looking / hoping for better performance from a c++ Clojure and in that case also curious what domains they are in (I’d naively expect jvm is better for Clojure webdev performance given jvm is historically optimized for webdev).
Mainly, the people interested in jank are the same folks interested in making Graal native images from their uberjars, combined with the folks interested in using some native lib from their Clojure code, combined with people who use Clojure reluctantly because they don't like the JVM. jank is significantly lighter, faster to start up, and has competitive runtime performance compared to the JVM.
Clojure is fast because of the JVM, not because it's a great compiler/runtime. jank is fast because of LLVM, yes, but also because a lot of work is going into the compiler/runtime to make it fast.
Previously, Mon->Wed nights and all of Thur->Sun would be for jank dev, since I felt like I didn't have enough time. Now I can focus a more normal Mon->Fri and more easily have space on the weekends to unwind and rejuvenate.
What could you do with 15-20 hours per week? A lot, I reckon'.
I'll be blunt here, I see it as just a proloned phase. You wanted something, we all wanted that something at some point. You're not the only one who sees problems and thinks "it could be done differently, if", that's why you gather auditory. You'll end up realizing that no language can replace all these years, and that the amount of real useful work that could be done in that time with boring tools is mind-boggling compared to what will ever come out of this optimistically. Every new real job brings some new insight into what could make it less job-y and more fun. These problems never end and most solutions do not fit together. Feeling that something is not right and it could be done more <adjectively> is just part of the job. If you truly believe in it and have a reasonable source of financial stability, godspeed. But I think you might be living an illusion that almost every programming enthusiast had at some point.
Are you going to build an engine in Jank after you release the language? I think you could do some really interesting things with server-side multiplayer in a clojure-y way.
rephrase in generic terms
"Lisp and SML were the only two which had real staying power"
These two languages are the pillars of high-level programming languages, period.