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How I Start: Clojure

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31–40 of 43 posts

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#31

Great writeup. Side note: If it were upto to me, I'd recommend Cursive Clojure (with IntelliJ) to beginners. No steep learning curve and works flawlessly! https://cursiveclojure.com/ EDIT: Added link

I'd recommend it until recently. I'm unsure why, but even with a fresh install of IDEA it fails outright and refuses to load on both of the machines I have it installed on.

I'm sorry about this - as other commenters have mentioned, you need to change your plugin repo when you change your IntelliJ version. This is due to unfortunate bugs in the IntelliJ private repos (see https://github.com/cursiveclojure/cursive/issues/813 and the associated YouTrack issue if you'd like lots of gory detail).

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#32
post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

Well... I may be biased as one of those folks who uses both vim and emacs, but: there is a big (positive) difference in my opinion between evaluating code in-line, right from your source file, in your editor, than copy+pasting it into a REPL somewhere. Loading up your ns in cider and then being able to evaluate functions, edit them, and see their output right in emacs is terrifically powerful. Even in SublimeText or…

No, you don't - in Cursive (in IntelliJ) you have always been able to send forms directly to the REPL from your editor. I think all good Clojure environments allow this.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#33
post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

>I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package Because Emacs is the best Lisp editing environment, hands down.

Depends on the lisp.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#34
post #28
post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

Agreed, learning Emacs while learning Clojure is just a bad idea. It's a huge distraction and it ties the success of learning Clojure into the success of learning Emacs (which will never be everyone's thing) and reduces your speed while learning. If you really want to evaluate stuff inline and get a more LISPian experience, use LightTable, not Emacs. But even then, I'd recommend against that. Use what you know.

You said it better than me.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#36
I would recommend the Nightcode editor (https://sekao.net/nightcode/) for those running Windows as it comes with a integrated Leiningen and Clojure compiler. Installing Leiningen on Windows is a huge PITA as the install scripts are pretty flimsy and won't install properly on 64bit Windows, especially in a multi user environment.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#37

Great writeup. Side note: If it were upto to me, I'd recommend Cursive Clojure (with IntelliJ) to beginners. No steep learning curve and works flawlessly! https://cursiveclojure.com/ EDIT: Added link

I'm a beginner and Clojure is on my list to try out, so this tutorial comes in handy. However I was looking to use LightTable - is this still a good choice? http://lighttable.com/

Light Table is the least hassle to setup and it's serviceable for smaller projects. However, I would definitely recommend using something like Cursive for any serious project.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#39

I would recommend the Nightcode editor ( https://sekao.net/nightcode/ ) for those running Windows as it comes with a integrated Leiningen and Clojure compiler. Installing Leiningen on Windows is a huge PITA as the install scripts are pretty flimsy and won't install properly on 64bit Windows, especially in a multi user environment.

Yeah, this is a real pain point for Windows users. Cursive and CCW also bundle lein, and I just fixed lein project creation within Cursive for this very reason (out in the next drop, today or tomorrow).

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#40
post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

>I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package Because Emacs is the best Lisp editing environment, hands down.

Lots of people disagree on that point, of course.
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