Hi Lee! Suggestions are very welcome !
I guess your suggested improvements could as well apply to other "Getting Started" pages, so posting them on the general clojure ml seems right to me. I'll answer "inline", focusing only on the Eclipse+Counterclockwise wiki page: 2010/7/4 Lee Spector <lspec...@hampshire.edu>: > > 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. Agreed. > 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. Agreed. > 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. Please also note that Stephan Mühlstrasser, an active contributor to Counterclockwise, is currently working on an very promising addition: there will soon be a "File > New > Example > Clojure > Creating a labrepl project" new menu entry. This will automatically do what it suggests, ending up by automatically launching a REPL for the project, and an internal eclipse web browser on the labrepl page ! > 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. I would suggest the following changes, please tell me if you're ok with them: > ----- > Create and run a simple Clojure project (Hello World): > > - Open the Java perspective: Window > Open Perspective > Java add a one line explanation of the "perspective" term ? : * (a perspective is a predefined layout of views, suitable for a particular type of development) > - 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 "!")) I would suggest not having the student write a function with side-effects as its first function. So maybe just (defn hello [who] (str "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? > Now that I think about it, there's sometimes the need to "refresh" the current perspective after a fresh installation: e.g. if you already were in the java Perspective, and it has been "customized" by the user, then he/she will not automatically see the new Namespace browser view installed behind the outline. I'll add this one too. If you're OK with this, I volunteer to update the wiki page. Cheers, -- Laurent -- 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
