[AlchemistCamp]

> you install clojure (via brew, or sh install) and that's it, you're good to go

The vast majority of PCs are Windows, not Mac or Linux. Though WSL2 (available with Windows Insiders) makes working with Linux software a breeze, it's not the standard flow. Java isn't installed by default, either.

Your guide suggests using WSL and IntelliJ. Does IntilliJ actually work with Closure running in WSL? For that matter, does the VS Code plugin?

These are all headaches a new programmer won't have when getting setup with PHP, Python, JavaScript or most popular languages.

[cmiles74]

The Windows story for Clojure is disappointingly weak, especially if you are going by the "Getting Started" section on their website.[0] They have reasonable instructions for Linux and MacOS, but for Windows they point you to an "alpha" level tool.

I think this is especially disappointing because there are mature, cross platform solutions available but whoever manages the Clojure project seems hell bent on pushing their "clj" tool which is, clearly, treating cross-platform concerns as an after thought. The Clojure organization conducts a survey every year and this is hurting their adoption with developers on Windows.

"One new question we asked this year was about the primary developer operating system to give us better guidance about tool-related work. As expected, MacOS was the leader (55%), followed by Linux (35%) and Windows (9%)"

Getting started with Leiningen, in my opinion, is much easier although, as has been pointed out, installing a JDK is an extra step that other languages don't have.

[0]: https://clojure.org/guides/getting_started

[1]: https://clojure.org/news/2020/02/20/state-of-clojure-2020

[2]: https://leiningen.org/

[e12e]

At least lein and boot-clj is available for/via scoop.sh. Seems a bit of a missed opportunity that "official" clojure "clj" isn't just using scoop.

[cmiles74]

Agreed, the Scoop instructions are simpler and many developers will already have it installed.

[flaie]

I have both a MacBook Pro and a standard PC running Windows, and yes on Windows I run Clojure both on Windows and inside WSL, both IntelliJ and VSCode works pretty well with WSL there's really no problem running it.

I'm doing a lot of Clojure since years both on my MBP and on Windows and there's no problem at all doing that way. Besides VSCode even has a plugin for WSL which will let you directly hook into it.

So yeah there are some questions like which Java to install, which IDE, .. but these questions are the same for other programming languages.

If you have any hint regarding how to improve my guide don't hesitate to tell me if something is not clear in it :)

[AlchemistCamp]

I'm not familiar enough with Clojure to help (ironically because I myself was put off by the tooling). The reason I asked about WSL and editor issues is because I encountered them myself when working with Elixir on WSL and VS Code and saw related issues on SO about Clojure. This was almost 2 years ago, though.

Probably the biggest thing would be to assume the person reading the guide has a brand new computer and hasn't installed anything yet (including Java and Homebrew).

It's really hard to assume much about the background of someone just trying a new programming language. Maybe they've worked with other languages and you're familiar with, maybe not.