"I've begun work on a tutorial to get people up and running with Clojure, but I will be recommending Emacs in it."
I'd like to strongly encourage against that. Here's my story: take from it what you will.
2 years ago, I decided to get started with Lisp. I looked around, and the most "official" path seemed to be using "Lisp Box", which is Emacs based. I didn't have any experience with Emacs, but I did keep hearing about it, so I decided to jump in and learn it (I was, after all, in a learning mood).
Of course, learning Emacs isn't a one-day affair. Sure, I could learn enough to do some Lisp (and I did). But it feels like a waste. So I started to learn a bit more about Emacs. Then more. Eventually, I was spending so much energy learning Emacs, that I didn't have any time left to learn Lisp. To this day, I've never learned Lisp.
In contrast, with Python, I spent a day with the IDLE shell that comes packaged as part of Python. Then I moved on to working in files, with IDLE as an editor. Eventually, I moved on to looking for a good Python editor/IDE, a search I spent a lot of time on. But the point is, I didn't need to learn a completely new environment to use Python. Don't forget, a n00b only has so much time/energy to learn, you don't want them wasting it on the editor but on the language. The editor can always come later.
I'd like to strongly encourage against that. Here's my story: take from it what you will.
2 years ago, I decided to get started with Lisp. I looked around, and the most "official" path seemed to be using "Lisp Box", which is Emacs based. I didn't have any experience with Emacs, but I did keep hearing about it, so I decided to jump in and learn it (I was, after all, in a learning mood).
Of course, learning Emacs isn't a one-day affair. Sure, I could learn enough to do some Lisp (and I did). But it feels like a waste. So I started to learn a bit more about Emacs. Then more. Eventually, I was spending so much energy learning Emacs, that I didn't have any time left to learn Lisp. To this day, I've never learned Lisp.
In contrast, with Python, I spent a day with the IDLE shell that comes packaged as part of Python. Then I moved on to working in files, with IDLE as an editor. Eventually, I moved on to looking for a good Python editor/IDE, a search I spent a lot of time on. But the point is, I didn't need to learn a completely new environment to use Python. Don't forget, a n00b only has so much time/energy to learn, you don't want them wasting it on the editor but on the language. The editor can always come later.