On Jul 25, 2011, at 4:11 AM, Michael Wood wrote: > On 25 July 2011 09:41, Sean Corfield <seancorfi...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 11:51 PM, pmbauer <paul.michael.ba...@gmail.com> >> wrote: > [...] >>> That's why I would give Clooj some prominence rather than burying it at the >>> bottom of the decision tree. >> >> Well, then put it at the top with the tag line "If you don't have a >> strong affinity for a specific IDE or editor, why not try Clooj which >> is a simple, lightweight editor focused on Clojure? Otherwise see the >> options below for adding Clojure support to your favorite IDE..." > > +1
+1 with a little more justification from one perspective: As a relative newbie (to Clojure and especially the Java ecosystem, but not to Lisp) and as a teacher (I have been and plan to continue teaching Clojure to undergrads) I have pretty strong opinions on this. What I hope for in a "getting started" page/process is something that will allow people with little/no experience with any existing programming environment to install and begin to use a Clojure environment that is "not toy" in the sense that it includes both a reasonable Lisp code editor (minimally: bracket matching and language-aware auto-reindenting) and a reasonable way to grow a project to include multiple files and libraries without learning a lot about classpaths and miscellaneous other Java tools (which probably means leiningen or cake). All of the existing full IDEs involve a lot of complexity that is bewildering to newcomers, either in installation/configuration, in use, in dealing with libraries/classpaths in the community-normed way, or in some combination of these. Until very recently I thought that the way forward on this was to push one or more of the existing IDEs in more newbie-friendly directions, e.g. by getting CCW to play more nicely with leiningen, or to provide more newbie-friendly installation/configuration scripts/instructions for emacs-based environments. And several people in the community have recently made contributions recently that helped with these things in significant ways. I thank them all! But from my perspective there was not yet a really complete, satisfying solution. Now along comes clooj. This has, to my mind, really leapfrogged over all of the other approaches in its potential to provide a really smooth entry ramp into Clojure coding for total novices -- AND (and this conjunction is quite important for me personally) also for seasoned non-Java-ecosystem programmers who want to use Clojure for serious work without mastering Java ecosystem tools. It provides trivial download/installation, a simple but sufficient editing environment and, I think (although I haven't yet worked with this) smooth integration with a leiningen-based or cake-based workflow. Related issues are being discussed on the clooj mailing list (cl...@googlegroups.com), and I think that with a few more enhancements to the environment and especially to the getting started instructions (focusing on integrated clooj+lein/cake workflow, and providing simple instructions for 1: hello world, 2: including and using a library, and 3: building an application) this will be a really excellent environment for newcomers. Assuming that clooj+lein/cake continues to improve as rapidly as it has over the last week, I too would advocate this being the first item listed on a Clojure getting started page. -Lee -- 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
