On Feb 15, 2013, at 1:29 PM, Víctor M. V. wrote: > Jules: > > between the current doc improvement for lein we're both participating in > (https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/issues/1007) and the available doc > for CCW (installation is one step really), are there any pain points that > such a starter kit would address?
While you've addressed this to Jules I'll say that one of the things a "starter kit" should provide is a way to edit code with bracket matching and auto-indentation, which I think are essential for any work in Clojure beyond one-liners. Of course leiningen doesn't aim to provide this, and that's fine. But that's why I think that leiningen by itself doesn't provide what I (& maybe others on this thread) mean by a starter kit. CCW *does* provide this, and very nicely, but on pain points of CCW for beginners: On Feb 15, 2013, at 1:31 PM, Mark Engelberg wrote: > I can see how the counterclockwise site would benefit from a more unambiguous > endorsement of a specific version of Eclipse, for users who aren't already > using it and are downloading it for the first time. There are a lot of > choices at the Eclipse site. Also, I understand there a few confusing > aspects of getting started once everything is installed: starting a project > (leiningen project vs clojure project), creating a file to code in (doesn't > automatically do user-friendly things like add the .clj extension to new > files created in the project nor add a default namespace declaration at the > top of the file), and starting the REPL (there are a few different ways to > start a REPL and it is not obvious what, if any, the differences are). All of that. And these are more baffling to newcomers than some of you may appreciate -- things just don't work if you don't make the correct choices among many ambiguous choices, and you have no idea why. Plus, although this is certainly not the fault of the CCW developers who are doing awesome work (it has improved a LOT over time!!), Eclipse is really complicated and full of all sorts of buttons and widgets and gizmos and hidden preference settings etc etc much of which will make no sense to people who are new to it and/or the JVM. And someone who just wants to write and some pure Clojure code shouldn't need to understand any of that. Which (yes, I'm a broken record), all again speaks in favor of Clooj as a starter kit: Download one thing and double click to run. You get obvious menus for creating projects etc with no unnecessary complexity. Write and edit (with bracket matching, auto-indentation, and a few other nice features) and run code without understanding anything but the code. I appreciate that a pointer to Clooj has been added to http://dev.clojure.org/display/doc/Getting+Started, and I think that's great. But I wish that it would get some more love from other tool developers because its author doesn't have the time to maintain it actively. There are several minor things that need fixing -- enough that I've had to stop teaching with it and switch back to CCW, but I'd love to go back to Clooj if it becomes more widely adopted and maintained. And if it does then it think it will be an excellent answer to many requests for a "starter pack." It's true that many people will want/need leiningen at some point, but Clooj will suffice for a long time for some kinds of work and one can use lein and Clooj together to do quite a lot more. (Actually, I think this is an area where some maintenance is required -- if I recall correctly Clooj may not yet find dependencies where they're pulled in by lein2.) And of course people may want to switch to Eclipse/CCW or emacs or whatever else at some point, for various reasons, once they have a better idea of what's what and why they should bother with the added complexity of those environments. -Lee PS I'm sure someone will think "you're asking other people to help maintain Clooj, why don't you do it yourself?" The answer is that I'm not really well steeped in the Java ecosystem or other things needed to do this well, but I am indeed willing and able to play a role by testing and providing constructive feedback. -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
