Yea... I'm still confused as to the whole point of pure/near-pure functional programming if we're not getting better code density/more productivity against other languages which I (and some others) find easier to work with.
I guess all I'm saying is "convince me!" :) I'm all ears.
In short: FP makes programs easier to reason about and understand by using trustworthy abstractions. Here are some resources to check out, which explain better than I could:
The big differences between Clojure and Python are probably twofold: it's a Lisp, and it focuses on getting concurrency right. We've had Lisps for a while, and Python only really lacks Lisp macros, so let's think about the concurrency stuff...
Clojure's design goals combine some deep ideas about identity, state and time together and includes data structures and a concurrency API that supports these goals. It's going to be hard for anyone to just convince you in a comment like this, and even if they could, I'm not the one to do it as I'm a Clojure noob.
I think you will find that Clojure is pretty interesting, even if you don't start using it right away. I apologize for just throwing you links, but I can't do it justice, and Rich Hickey is a great lecturer, so you'll get more from his stuff.
I mean the answer is that the Python example is nearly purely functional to begin with. It uses list comprehensions heavily and I couldn't find any mutating assignments in a quick glance of the code. Which is not surprising, since it was written by Peter Norvig, who wrote a very popular Lisp book.
I think what Clojure can offer on top of that is macros, the advantages of which are really only evident on bigger or harder problems.
Its not so much about brevity or productivity as it is about correctness. Functional programming and immutable data makes it easier to reason about code and to prevent bugs/errors, especially in the context of concurrent/multicore code.
I guess all I'm saying is "convince me!" :) I'm all ears.