1)install leiningen 2)install lighttable 3)??? 4)Clojure

Edit: You really don't need an IDE for clojure. A repl and a text editor are your best friends IMO

Install IntelliJ install cursive. Done.

Have a friend who as learning to program. He got Cursive going in less than 30min

You could have had a repl going in about the time to took you to compose and write this statement.

I'm not saying that to be snarky, but I'm just pointing out how quick it actually is.

brew install leiningen

lein repl

<begin learning clojure>

You don't need an IDE for Clojure, IMO, huge IDEs like intellij/cursive are anti-clojure, Clojure culture encourages to write programs composed of small, modular components that can be tested individually, so mostly you keep things in your head, and if you haven't work with it in a while, is easy pick up again, Clojure doesn't need a "dot operator" to autocomplete to million of different API classes/methods. Rich Hickey makes a comparison here: https://youtu.be/VSdnJDO-xdg?t=2943

The thing is that most Clojure users are/were heavy Java users and they feel awkward without their IDEs and also some have a big java project that hey mix with clojure.

I do it with vim and fireplace.vim, it took about 45 minutes to get going. Definitely worth it.

My learning curve and first project (extending a Java app with Clojure) were done entirely with lein (run and repl mostly) and SublimeText.