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Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

Let's say I'm a beginner. I've installed Clojure following the instructions on that page.

Now what?

Neither "Learn Clojure" nor "Programming in REPL" even mention how to run it. I'm assuming you need to just type `clojure` in the shell (I'm only assuming this because I have experience with other languages that allow this, neither Java no C/C++ have this)?

"Learn Clojure" has a bunch of examples before it even gets to REPL. I guess I can run them? Somewhere?

The there's the "Programming at the REPL" section and... Then what? How do I start a project? How do I create a program? How do I compile and build a project? Run it? Test it? Configure it? Where is all that?

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The link near the top to "command line tools" (https://clojure.org/guides/deps_and_cli) is probably the next logical step but maybe could be highlighted better. If you want to leave some comments on an issue at https://github.com/clojure/clojure-site/issues - that's a great place for me to take actionable feedback.

Fully learning the language, the tools, and how to make a project are all different topics, and have their own interactions with whatever other tooling they are using. I think a lot of that is there but I'll take your point that they aren't guided well enough. Definitely worth taking a few more passes, thanks.

> probably the next logical step but maybe could be highlighted better

It's definitely not a "next logical step". A next logical step is "create, test, and deploy a clojure program". For some reason these important topics are given a total of maybe 5 paragraphs inside a section on CLI tools?

> I think a lot of that is there but I'll take your point that they aren't guided well enough

"A lot is there" is a total of two paragraphs on writing a program outside of REPL, a total of two paragraphs not even on testing but on how to include a test directory. And that's it.

As a beginner I wouldn't even know where to look for this (Google is often not enough).

Clojurescript is slightly better in this regard. At least after the quick start guide I have some understanding on what goes there.

I may open an issue if I don't forget tomorrow :D

I appreciate the feedback.

It took me a while to remember my promise :) https://github.com/clojure/clojure-site/issues/356

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