Vectors, on the other hand, don't treat the first item any differently. So [f x y] in Clojure is the same as [f, x, y] in Python.

Lisps like Clojure also have the notion of quoting, which languages like Python have no direct analogy to. By quoting an expression Clojure, we tell the compiler not to evaluate its contents. So (quote f x y) or '(f x y) will return a list of unevaluated symbols. We can evaluate them later on with eval, if we so desire, so (eval (quote f x y)) is equivalent to (f x y).

Oh, and you're right about conj – though in vectors conj appends to the end, whilst in lists it appends to the beginning.

I totally agree with the bit about abstracting out html. I'm planning on re-factoring frequently as I go along, to kind of show an evolution from the simplest case to a well designed piece of software.

It's a bit easier to enforce this in other web frameworks that include the plumbing for these kind of abstractions in the first place, but I think I prefer this for learning the language. It abstracts away the details of dealing with HTTP requests and routing without getting in the way of the fun pieces. We'll see what comes out down the line as a result.

Here's my fork of your gist: http://gist.github.com/76507

I was under the impression that () was also a list. So you could do (1 ((2) 3)).

Also, it looks like “conj” can be applied to any sequence, but you're right about “assoc”. There are others too that only work with vectors according to http://clojure.org/data_structures.