I think the article should be titled 'JVM isn't for me'.
According to the article, the author moved to Janet, because it is Clojure-like without the JVM overhead.
How about Clojure on node? Starts and runs instantly https://planck-repl.org/
I prefer to use nbb[0] for this, or babashka[1] when I need to use stuff specific to JVM.
[0]: https://github.com/babashka/nbb [1]: https://babashka.org/