Clojure is a great language that has an achilles heel right now. The community doesn't treat the lack of learning resources / documentation as a serious problem. I've heard prominent members of the community say this exactly, "Clojure is such a great language that the lack of learning resources doesn't constitute a real problem in the grand scheme of things." I know what they're trying to communicate, but to beginners it comes off like "We've created the greatest thing since sliced bread - but we're not going to tell you how to use it - and if you would just take our word for it and blindly follow with no guidance you'll be a better developer". Which is really frustrating to hear, because it's like this thing seems so great, and smart people are all about it, but the only way to learn it is absolute misery. It's a tough perspective to have when you're only a couple years in to your dev career.
Clojure gives you massive benefits, but god it's a brutal road to competence. Things that should be simple like setting up a web server, adding user authentication, making JSON API's, trying to find the best libraries, it's all a time-consuming trudge through pain and suffering. And after some months when you get somewhat competent with the language, you realize that in order to get the full power of Clojure you need to not only learn the Clojure language, but the entire Clojure ecosystem. So you need Clojure, Clojurescript, Datomic, Edn, Core.async etc... And each piece of that puzzle is equally horribly documented and has no beginner resources so you have to struggle at each point in the process, praying to god that it's ultimately worth it.
It's frustrating as hell, but it really is rewarding, because you have to learn every little piece at a low-level to ever make anything happen. There's no Rails-like framework that makes things 'just-work' waiting for you. I find that using Clojure is awesome, but learning Clojure is awful. I'm hoping to play a role in fixing that second part pretty soon, but really wish the community would be more active in helping to remedy the problem. The first step is admitting that the problem exists and it matters, and not sure that we're there yet.
Clojure gives you massive benefits, but god it's a brutal road to competence. Things that should be simple like setting up a web server, adding user authentication, making JSON API's, trying to find the best libraries, it's all a time-consuming trudge through pain and suffering. And after some months when you get somewhat competent with the language, you realize that in order to get the full power of Clojure you need to not only learn the Clojure language, but the entire Clojure ecosystem. So you need Clojure, Clojurescript, Datomic, Edn, Core.async etc... And each piece of that puzzle is equally horribly documented and has no beginner resources so you have to struggle at each point in the process, praying to god that it's ultimately worth it.
It's frustrating as hell, but it really is rewarding, because you have to learn every little piece at a low-level to ever make anything happen. There's no Rails-like framework that makes things 'just-work' waiting for you. I find that using Clojure is awesome, but learning Clojure is awful. I'm hoping to play a role in fixing that second part pretty soon, but really wish the community would be more active in helping to remedy the problem. The first step is admitting that the problem exists and it matters, and not sure that we're there yet.