On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Lee Spector <lspec...@hampshire.edu> wrote: > > On Jul 7, 2011, at 7:29 PM, Sean Corfield wrote: >> And yet the #1 "FAQ" we see on lists and reflected in blog posts is >> about getting Clojure up and running... We see Java developers, >> committed to their favorite IDE, still asking "Should I install / >> learn Emacs?" We see old-time Lispers, happy with Emacs, struggle with >> the Java infrastructure. A lot of n00bs want to be told the "One True >> Way" to set up their development environment - they don't want to be >> confronted with choices. >> >> Like you, I don't entirely understand why this is an issue - but I >> accept that it clearly _is_ an issue... > > For me at least the issue isn't that there should be a single blessed setup, > but rather that there should be at least one setup (and documentation for > that setup) that's a little more newbie-friendly than any of them currently > are.
How about: GETTING STARTED If you're coming from a Lisp background, or at least are familiar with emacs _here is how to set up with emacs and leiningen_. If you're coming from a Java background, _download Eclipse and CCW_ or _download NetBeans and Enclojure_. If your programming experience lies elsewhere, or you're new to programming altogether, _insert something here_. The last one is maybe the trickiest. Best might be a good text editor for programming that isn't Emacs, combined with leiningen. Someone had been working on a lightweight Clojure IDE/editor here recently but I don't know the current status of that. Notepad won't cut it and it should follow normal GUI text editor conventions. All of the programmers' editors I know of are either the one built into NetBeans, the one built into Enclojure, emacs, vi, something that imitates emacs, something that imitates vi, abandoned, or non-free, though. > On the emacs/lein option I think the main problem is the messiness of the > installation and configuration process. If code/instructions were available > that reliably produced a full and reasonably configured emacs/slime/lein > setup, on most common platforms, with a single download and double click (or > something not much more complicated), then this would be a more attractive > option. I'm not so sure. For newbs to it, emacs has a steep learning curve even if you avoid any installation hiccups. On the other hand, for emacs old hands the current rocky road to configuring emacs/slime/swank-clojure/lein/etc. to play nice with one another is the sort of thing they've been coping with for years and in some cases even decades; one might argue "they can take it". Of course, emacs setup for Clojure that works painlessly out of the box wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm not sure it's a priority compared to getting a truly newbie-friendly installation option up there and documented for people that would be intimidated by Eclipse and Netbeans and would have kittens if suddenly confronted with emacs. :) -- Protege: What is this seething mass of parentheses?! Master: Your father's Lisp REPL. This is the language of a true hacker. Not as clumsy or random as C++; a language for a more civilized age. -- 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
