I have to say that while I'm sorry that we didn't snag the original poster as a Clojure user, he has actually done us a real favor. The most important customer is the pissed off customer who tells you why he is pissed off. You don't have to take everything he says to heart, but it is always worth listening to the one that got away.
As someone who was a raw clojure beginner not all that long ago, a beginner with a lot of Java experience, I do think that we have a problem with the 'out of the box' experience. My first bit of evidence is the fact that the issue seems to come up fairly often. When you have a persistent customer complaint, you have to ask yourself, is the problem with the customer? In fact, before a recent intro-to-clojure talk I went ahead and built my own little 'get you going' project just to make it easier for the raw beginner: http://github.com/russolsen/dejour/downloads While dejour is just a quick and dirty thing that I put together in a few hours, I think that it captures what we need: a single zip/tar/jar file that you can download, unpack and run. No install, no git, no nothing. Just download, unpack and run a simple script. As someone else mentioned, JRuby does a really good job of this. We can at least as good as JRuby. How far can you get with just a repl and no ide? Perhaps just far enough to decide that this clojure thing is worth more time. Perhaps more: There is nothing in clojure that requires an ide any more than python or ruby or perl. It's a complicated world out there, full of very smart people with varying backgrounds. Some of them know lisp but not java. Some know java but no lisp. Some know neither but are smart nevertheless and are looking for a better language. Many of the engineers that I work with will run screaming from the room at the sight of a shell/batch script I think we want them all. We want every one of them to use clojure. Russ On Mar 22, 1:26 am, cej38 <junkerme...@gmail.com> wrote: > I am a physicist by training and practice, this means that I am an > expert on Fortran 95. To say my exposure to Java is minimal would be > generous. And until last year when I heard about Clojure from a > friend, I thought LISP was a speech impediment. > > Setting up Clojure was a MAJOR problem for me, what with getting > path's and classpaths right. (Figuring out what a classpath is was a > challenge.) If it wasn't for the very patient help of a CS friend of > mine, I would not have figured it out. > > I think the documentation assumes that the user is comfortable with > Java. I feel like I am being asked to learn Java so that I can learn > Clojure. > > I am now an avid Clojure user, but there really does need to be better > descriptions of how to set Clojure up on the website. > > On Mar 21, 4:37 pm, Quzanti <quza...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > > > > Reading his post I got the impression he was a bit of an egocentric (a > > bit more information about himself than was relevant), those sorts > > tend to overreact. > > > However I can imagine the whole just bung the jar file on your > > classpath thing wouldn't make much sense for a java newbie. It may > > highlight the need for some special 'getting started' documentation > > for Lisp programmers who have never used java, which I understand to > > be one target audience of clojure. > > > > 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. -- 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.
