Hello all, On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 8:42 PM, Tim Johnson <t...@johnsons-web.com> wrote: > I have evaluated clojure for the last couple of days, and it is both my own > professional decision and my recommendation to the professional organizations > that I belong to and report to that clojure is not ready for prime time. >
Since I had a pretty smooth experience with Clojure right from the start, despite having little experience with Java, I'll try to describe what made it easy for me - maybe this will help someone trying to come up with improvements to the initial experience. For me, having the "Programming Clojure" zip file available was great. Being able to just run bin/repl.bat (or .sh) whenever I wanted to try something out - even if it involved some of the additional libraries, such as the database connectivity stuff - was just great. Running it from an Emacs shell to get better history navigation etc. was also very nice (I never got as far as using Slime, even though I should probably try it sometimes). Well, with the minor caveat that Emacs and jline don't always play nice, so I removed jline from the .bat after wondering for a while why (+ 1 1) sent to the Clojure REPL inside Emacs never returns :-) So maybe this is a way to make friendly environments for beginners. Maybe it's enough make more "Programming Clojure"-like environments, targeted towards beginners, beginners interested in web/database access, beginners with an interest in graphics, etc. Some script (or just instructions about how to do it) to update clojure.jar and the libs would be nice too. Care must be taken to keep things easy - the script should not try to compile anything, just attempt to download updated versions - trying to compile stuff would increase friction for newbies. The great part about the "Programming Clojure" environment is not that it makes very hard things easy - but that it makes simple tasks very simple (no need to download and configure Compojure, it's just there). Just reducing friction seems to be a very good idea, things are more likely to be tried out when they are just a few keystrokes away. As for the original poster, it's weird that he evaluates Clojure for just two days - and decides that although the technical principles it is based on are sound, the whole thing should be dismissed because of the first 'tactical' hurdle - installing. Maybe the guy is used to evaluating things by reading marketing texts? Maybe the CLASSPATH is really such a big problem? (this is hard to evaluate for someone used to the command line). Nevertheless, it would be dangerous to ignore or dismiss his troubles, as they are probably quite common, so if anyone is thinking about how to improve the situation, maybe my opinion above of what made me happy with Clojure at the beginning is useful. Oh, and "Programming Clojure" itself was great in making me see how to use Clojure in practice (I already knew it was great in theory, but the book made the practice-theory gap much smaller). So maybe the book (or the coming books) should be promoted more? Bye, > Before any of you think that I am a disgruntled newbie turned troll, know > the following: > > 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. > -- Miron Brezuleanu -- 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.
