I have some sympathy with some of what Tim wrote, although I think that I'll be working in and enjoying Clojure for some time to come (really -- I'm finding it to be fantastic in many ways -- including the community). I'm not sure I agree with or even understand all of Tim's complaints, but as a relative newcomer to the Java world I share some of his thoughts about getting started.
The last two environments I've worked/taught in have been DrScheme and Processing, and both of these have the virtue that you download/install one thing and instantly have an intuitive IDE within which you can write and run code. Same for MCL way back in the day, and for just about any other environment in which I've done much work or teaching (egads, back to Turbo Pascal and Think C). BTW Processing even has a one button "export applet" function that makes web deployment of applets trivial, and this is REALLY attractive to students with non-compsci backgrounds and other total newcomers to programming. To many of you setting up Clojure probably seems just about as simple, and you may be thinking "Jeez -- if they can't even do that then how do they expect to be able to do anything interesting with the language anyway?" But for newcomers to Java -- even newcomers with lots of coding experience in other environments -- the issues with classpaths and putting jars in the right places can be pretty frustrating, to say nothing of the hoops one has to jump through to set up slime or the other available IDEs (even with the very nice videos that some of you have made, because there are enough steps and platform dependencies that things can go wrong in many ways). Although I now have a nice environment set up I'm still a little worried about how I'll deal with setup on all of the machines in our lab, and on the laptops of students with no previous experience... I'm sure that this can and will be overcome, in part because I think that for my main environment (Mac OS X) and for my needs (which are more about ease of starting to write and run code than about deployment) MCLIDE/Clojure is very close already (three cheers for Terje!). So whatever else might have been right or wrong about Tim's post, I agree that it could be a little easier for total newcomers to get going... and I think the community will grow even more quickly when it is. -Lee On Mar 21, 2010, at 4:39 PM, Laurent PETIT wrote: > Yeah, > > too bad he removed his entry, 'cause as you said, installing clojure > isn't harder than installing anything java based. I don't know of a > sysadmin nowadays which had not to deal with java stuff in a way or > another ? And ant is around the place *for years*. So more input from > him may have helped more clearly identify the root problem. > > 2010/3/21 Cosmin Stejerean <cstejer...@gmail.com>: >> >> >> On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Fogus <mefo...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> 1)As soon as I see the copy of this email in my "clojure mailbox", I >>>> will >>>> unsubscribe from this mailing list, delete the clojure mailbox and I >>>> will not >>>> be following up in any way. >>> >>> Really? This is not c.l.l and it's not likely that this thread would >>> have devolved into flaming or worse. It's unfortunate he feels the >>> need to take such an extreme measure because I didn't read his post as >>> a troll and felt that a dialog about his issues might have been >>> enlightening. >>> >> >> I don't understand the complaints about installing Clojure. As far as I know >> there's nothing required to 'install' Clojure beyond downloading the >> clojure.jar, other than I guess having a working Java installation. >> Similarly, I don't understand the difficulties in deploying Clojure >> applications. At least as far as web applications go, I really like the one >> WAR file deployment of Java applications. It's certainly far easier in >> general than deploying Python applications for example. >> -- >> Cosmin Stejerean >> http://offbytwo.com >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "Clojure" group. >> To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com >> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your >> first post. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en >> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> clojure+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words >> "REMOVE ME" as the subject. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your > first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words > "REMOVE ME" as the subject. -- Lee Spector, Professor of Computer Science School of Cognitive Science, Hampshire College 893 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002-3359 lspec...@hampshire.edu, http://hampshire.edu/lspector/ Phone: 413-559-5352, Fax: 413-559-5438 Check out Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines: http://www.springer.com/10710 - http://gpemjournal.blogspot.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
