Clojure for Beginners

At the moment on the Clojure mailing list there is a large rambling discussion about Clojure needing to be easier for beginners. There is some merit to this idea but I find this type of discussion doesn’t actually produce anything worthwhile.  Despite the large amount of hot air a couple of people have stepped forward with some useful videos for setting up Clojure in Eclipse and IntelliJ Idea.

Laurent Petit posted the following video on the Eclipse plugin:

and Greg Slepak posted the following video (via his blog):

If you’re considering starting with Clojure these are reasonable alternatives despite being somewhat immature. Personally I made life difficult on myself deciding to use Emacs. Emacs is great but the learning curve is horrible. Learning a new language and learning a new (difficult) editor at the same time is tough (although ultimately I’m glad I did it).