For example, consider how a beginner can write Ruby and Python in notepad.exe while a lisp would be insufferable (and a common, awful first experience for that reason). Also, some of its best features, like cider/nrepl and Paredit, are hidden behind yet more tooling and keyboard shortcuts.
It's certainly a filter.
Absence of that filter is the reason almost all of the programming crowd today is locked into advanced beginner mode all life.
Now that you've gotten everything setup, let's write a program! Open up your favorite text editor and type in the following:
puts 1+2 Save your program (yes, that's a program!) as calc.rb (the .rb is what we usually put at the end of programs written in Ruby). Now run your program by typing ruby calc.rb into your command line. It should have put a 3 on your screen. See, programming isn't so hard, now is it?
It's this sort of thing that probably drives the likes of Alan Kay crazy when even learning a language isn't interactive by default.
(println (+ 1 2))
clojure calc.clj