title: Clojure or Scala for bioinformatics/biostatistics/medical research
body: <p>I am not a professional programmer (my area is medical research), but I am quite capable in C/C++, and various scripting languages. A while back I got intrigued by Lisp, but I never got the time to seriously learn it. After a brief exposure to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29" rel="nofollow">R</a> I decided to invest more time in a functional programming language.</p>
  
  <p>I would like the practicality of a JVM language and thus narrowed to Clojure and Scala. From what I understand, both can use already existing Java libraries and given at performance-critical code can be delegated to Java, have the potential to perform relatively equally well.</p>
  
  <p>How do these languages compare in the application space I need them for?
  Are There any real-life projects in bioinformatics using either?</p>
  
  <p>Already existing code would be a serious plus, as would be good documentation and a fairly gentle learning curve. Also, how does the concurrency model of the two compare with each other?</p>
  
  <p>Any significant advantages/disadvantages any one has?</p>