On Sep 3, 2011, at 2:58 PM, Colin Yates wrote: > > My semi-serious point is that as a beginner the question being answered is > more like "what is it all about" and "how can I try these samples/examples" > rather than "how do I do 'proper' enterprise development with this". The > best answer for the former isn't necessarily the best answer for the later. > > Getting started should be the smallest set of steps possible; the REPL. > There is no "beginner" solution involving an IDE because they are all full of > their own complexity. Clooj seems the simplest but you still need to create > projects which is one step too far for getting started
IMO an important "getting started" target is actually somewhere in between these extremes -- nowhere near "how do I do 'proper' enterprise development with this" but also not quite just "what is it all about," which after all you can learn from reading a blog post or maybe http://www.try-clojure.org/. There's a sweet spot with little or no more complexity than a minimal REPL that allows one to see what it's all about but also to do quite a lot of serious work, and to my mind clooj, like similar environments for other languages (DrRacket was mentioned here and that's also in this category), hits this sweet spot very nicely. Setup for clooj is download and double click -- awesome! -- and you do NOT need to create a project to get a REPL -- it's there right away, although I agree that it could be presented more clearly. There is very little complexity even when you want to do more, since most of the features are easily discoverable through a small set of obvious menus. And Clooj helps you in simple, discoverable ways with bracket matching and proper indentation, without which nobody should ever be asked to write even a single Lisp form -- IMO again of course, but IMO as someone who has taught Lisp to newcomers for 20 years or so. It's trued that most IDEs have a lot of complexity -- I still haven't fully figured out the others that I've used for Clojure -- but Clooj really doesn't and yet it can support real work. Maybe not "proper enterprise development" (I don't do that), but definitely fairly sophisticated academic projects. The path that I plan to present to my students is "start with Clooj, then if you want more features graduate to Clooj+lein, and that may be all you ever need. Or if you love emacs or eclipse or netbeans or… then try these other options…." -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
