But to my point about friction in Clojure tooling, you can't just download Cursive, run it, and try Clojure. You have to download and install Java, Leiningen, IntelliJ, get a Cursive license, then install the Cursive plug in, create a project configure a REPL (local or remote?). None of that is a big problem, but cumulatively, all these little points of friction deter beginners.
And thank you for your work in the community. Luminus is great, and I Macchiato looks really nice as well.
Thanks, always good to hear these things are useful.
As I pointed out in the original comment, you don't really have to use Cursive if you're starting out. Cursive is great for working on serious projects, but it's certainly not a requirement for trying Clojure.
Aside from Atom, you also have Light Table, VS Code, Vim, Emacs, and Eclipse. Chances are a lot of people would be using at least one of these tools. As far as having to download the JVM and Leiningen, it's not really different than what you'd have to do for Python, Ruby, or Node.js.
So, I don't think the situation for Clojure is really any worse than most languages. That said, I think that Nightcoders could remove any friction in starting with the language.
I think it is a little harder to set up (compare to Ruby and Python, which are preinstalled on Macs), plus throw in the functional concepts,Lisp syntax, and Java errors. Together it makes for a bunch of small initial pain points that I am certain causes some people to drop out, which is frustrating because Clojure is awesome. DrRacket might be a good comparison for a more similar language with an easier initial ramp up.
And thank you for your work in the community. Luminus is great, and I Macchiato looks really nice as well.