I think it would be helpful to make a couple of changes to the "Getting Started with Eclipse and Counterclockwise" page on assembla (http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/clojure/Getting_Started_with_Eclipse_and_Counterclockwise). Is this the right place to propose such a thing?
I guess since it's a Wiki maybe I could do it myself but I'm new here and am not sure if my changes would be complete or correct. So I'm going to propose some specific changes but I'm hoping that someone who knows more can make the actual changes. As of this writing there are two bullet items -- "Install Eclipse" and then "Install Counterclockwise" -- followed by a large section titled "If you are learning Clojure". My proposals are: 1) Add a new, third bullet item, after "Install Counterclockwise," called something like "Create and run a simple Clojure project (Hello World)." See draft below. 2) Rename the large section currently called "If you are learning Clojure" to something like "Installing and running the labrepl environment for learning Clojure." The rationale is that the first two bullet items get the system installed but don't show the new user (new to Eclipse as well as Clojure) how to write or run code, while the labrepl section involves a lot more steps, all of which will be unnecessary for new users who don't want to use labrepl or maven or any of the other stuff that comes along that route. At least for me and my students (and probably some others coming from the Lisp world), the key things to know are how to open a file, write Clojure code in it, run it, and get a REPL. Maybe this stuff is obvious to others... or maybe the intended readers of the current page are people who already use Eclipse and so these steps would be obvious to them. But I'm coming to Eclipse fresh, just to use it as a Clojure IDE, and it's not obvious to me. BTW I've never actually used labrepl, and maybe when I know more I'll want to use it after all. (When I last tried it under NetBeans the installation failed, and the main way I see to take a quick look at what it provides -- http://foognostic.net/labrepl-summary/ -- works only after it is installed...). But in any event I think that some people will want to start without doing the whole git/maven/labrepl thing, and that they'll be able to get started after installation with a brief description leading to Hello World. Here's a stab at the text for the new section BUT please note that a lot of this is new to me and I may be doing something horribly wrong. That's what motivated me to make this proposal in the first place -- I want to be sure I'm doing it right, and then it would be good if others were told as well. ----- Create and run a simple Clojure project (Hello World): - Open the Java perspective: Window > Open Perspective > Java - Create a Clojure project: File > New > Project... > Clojure Project - Create a Clojure source code file: File > New > File, name it helloworld.clj - Type code in it to define a function: (defn hello [who] (println "Hello" who "!")) - Run it: Run > Run -- this evaluates the code and starts a REPL - Call your function: 1:1 user=> (hello "Betty") Hello Betty ! nil ----- Is that right? Could it be improved? Thanks, -Lee -- 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
