It took you less than 60 seconds to install Java, compile Clojure, and start the REPL? :) I haven't actually used (or installed) Clojure, but most of the complaints (here and on proggit) appear to be by people who don't already know Java, and so have to figure out enough of the Java build process to build Clojure in the first place, even though a touted advantage of Clojure is that you don't have to deal with Java.
I have no java (programming) experience, and it took me ~45 s:
#apt-get install closure
#closure
user=> (+ 2 2)
4
Most of that 45 s was waiting for apt-get.
Now it's not going to be this easy on platforms that don't have such nice package management (e.g. Windows). Furthermore, Raphael_Amiard makes a good point that there's a lot more infrastructure that has to go into web application development (or any other kind of application development, for that matter) than computing the sum of 2 and 2.
Nonetheless, it just doesn't seem that hard. At worst, put a "clojure /path/to/project.lisp" in rc.local or equivalent.
(Caveat: my web development experience consists entirely of a couple of toy projects I ran on my laptop for my own amusement. Take all this with a grain of salt.)
There is _no_ cloJure package, neither on debian, neither on ubuntu repos, and it's called clojure, not closure, so either you are full of shit, either you installed closure common lisp, either you have non standart repos. This is a scary example of how a post can be upvoted when _nobody_ in presence understands what they are talking about.
The problem isn't that it's hard to get at the REPL (it's not) - it's envisioning how to use Clojure to do a full-scale web project. What's the workflow?
Using Clojure actually isn't that hard. It is basically the same amount of difficulty as any other compiled language. You can basically take any text editor and do a standard 'write->compile->run'. However, most people that are familiar with Lisp, prefer a more interactive development environment that allows you to make changes to a running app. Probably the most powerful environment for doing this is SLIME in Emacs. As a result this is what is mentioned the most. I think this tends to scare people off.
I don't know why the Enclojure plugin for Netbeans isn't mentioned more. It provides an interactive development environment for Clojure in package that is much easier to digest for anyone who is familiar with an IDE.
The advantage should be more properly stated that you don't have to deal with Java the language, but you still get Java the ecosystem. Using all of the supporting build & deployment stuff is actually seen as advantage with experienced Clojure guys.
