Is this a good introduction to Clojure?

So I wanted to help someone get started with Clojure today. For those who haven't done much with Java before, the incredible overhead associated with doing the most trivial tasks leads to a bad impression.

To make matters worse, I was trying to set up Emacs for use with Clojure. I'm not an Emacs noob. I used ESS as my main development environment several years ago, but was not impressed, and moved on.

[Edit: Used bold font to emphasize that I'm writing from the perspective of someone who decided he'd try Clojure using Emacs. My personal recommendation is to use Counterclockwise or Clooj.]

This is what someone new to Clojure would experience.

Go to the main Clojure page instructions.

"Install clojure-mode."

Don't know what that means, but I'll click the link.

"If you use package.el, you can install with M-x package-install clojure-mode. Otherwise you can do a manual install by downloading clojure-mode.el and placing it in the ~/.emacs.d/ directory, creating it if it doesn't exist. Then add this to the file ~/.emacs.d/init.el:"

Well, not being a total Emacs noob, I tried M-x package-install clojure mode.  I got [No Match] in return.

What is clojure-mode.el? Where do I download it? Google found it for me. I downloaded it to the ~/.emacs.d directory. I added the lines to init.el (though I had to create that file, something the instructions didn't mention).

The vast majority of new Clojure users would have given up by now. Users should not have to figure things out for themselves - that is the purpose of documentation.

So let's move on. There's a discussion of how to set up package.el. Okay, that doesn't apply to me.

Then there's a discussion of clojure-test-mode. It says "This source repository also includes clojure-test-mode.el, which provides support for running Clojure tests (using the clojure.test framework) via SLIME and seeing feedback in the test buffer about which tests failed or errored. The installation instructions above should work for clojure-test-mode as well."

So do I need it? Is it something that most users install? I'm going to skip it. I can do tests when I get to that point.

Then there's something about paredit, which I hate, but it's recommended for all users.

Following that, there's a section titled "Basic REPL", which says, "
Use M-x run-lisp to open a simple REPL subprocess using Leiningen. Once that has opened, you can use C-c C-r to evaluate the region or C-c C-l to load the whole file.
If you don't use Leiningen, you can set inferior-lisp-program to a different REPL command"

The only way you'd have any idea what that means is if you knew beforehand. That may have set a record for the least informative paragraph ever written. I get tired when I read something like that. What is meant by "different REPL command"? Heck with it, I'm returning to the main page. {Note: this is explained on the main page, but the reader isn't told that.}


I created a new clojure file in Emacs (ending with .clj). There's no automatic indentation! How on earth do you write Lisp code without automatic indentation?

Eventually I got it sort of working, though I never got Clojure 1.3.0 to work. This is not a pretty introduction to Clojure. {I'm not saying it's my introduction to Clojure. It is the introduction to Clojure for anyone who reads Emacs + Clojure is the best alternative.} There's a lot of room for improvement.

I recommend immediately eliminating all references to Emacs when talking about Clojure, with an exception for "Don't waste your time with Emacs if you want to learn Clojure."