I was using textmate and a repl for the longest time because I was put off by the intricacies of emacs.. and then I found this:
https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live and the tutorial that recommended it http://www.vijaykiran.com/2012/01/11/web-application-development-with-clojure-part-1/ It's great. I'm completely sold on emacs.. On any computer, I install emacs, install lein, run one command: $ git clone https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live ~/emacs.d Now I have everything I need to develop in clojure like hinting, autocomplete and docs. Most importantly, it has a black background and fluro text by default. NO CUSTOMISATIONS! I remember how difficult it was for me as a complete newbie coming into the language. Thinking in a functional style was hard enough, let alone trying to get swank working and then frustrating over every aspect of emacs.... banging my head against the wall would have been more productive. It was so frusting because I just wanted something that worked and a bunch of tutorials that showed me how to get started. Things like autocomplete and documentation are essential for learning the concepts quickly. Its only recently that a spate of them has come out for the joe programmer and its really good to see that happening. My 2 cents: - New users don't want complication. Give them one 'product' to start off with and then slowly introduce them to more concepts later - Videos and Tutorials are a must. Its not about showing off about "look how short I can make my code man"... Its about helping others see a new way to think about the problem. The only way to do that besides sitting down with them is through tutorials. Longer tutorials and demonstrations that work through a complete problem are more helpful than short ones that are demonstrating the 'feature.. Hats off in particular to Brian Marick (http://vimeo.com/19404746), Chas Emerick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVd4ow-ZcX0), and Phil Hagelburg (https://peepcode.com/products/functional-programming-with-clojure) for taking the time to show the world how they worked through a 'real-world' problem. So basically, if a 'lead clojure evangelist' can either 'officially' or 'unofficially' recommend ONE emacs setup, along with a bunch of videos/tutorials that demonstrate how to code and how fast it is to design and code using the repl. Then that be enough to get people at least interested. Expanding on that idea, If there were a set of peepcode-like 1 to 1.5h tutorials for clojure and its libraries (an episode on ring, an episode on agents futures and watches, an episode on incanter, an episode on writing a dsl, an episode on aleph..., an episode on writing a clojurescript application and also doing 'play-by-play' videos with top clojure developers), I'm sure newbies are going to take up the language much faster because they will have the crutches to allow them to explore the clojure landscape without worrying about how to go about entering text into a arcane text-editor. -- 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
