Learn Leiningen- not only because it makes Clojure simple and pleasurable to use, but because it'd be a fantastic tool no matter what language it was part of.
Project skeletons (new new), command line scripting (via lein exec), deployment, the wonderful 'lein ring server', custom plugins... and for those who just want to get their feet wet, 'lein repl' brings the ocean to you.
My initial reaction was to upvote @eccp, based on my experience with leiningen the first time round. Long story short: went around in circles following outdated (but seemingly comprehensive) guides that twisted my mind with hopeless combinations of Ant, Maven, Leiningen, emacs, slime and swank, among others. Basically gave up after a while, but was fortunate to get some encouragement here on HN, and went back in with just leiningen and emacs. I recall that was just the right mix, and as you say, lein repl pretty much brought the ocean to me.
The Art of Learning is less about learning things than it is about becoming very, very good at the things you learn.
While the book is highly autobiographical, the author does goes into a lot of detail about how he got really good at chess and tai chi.
What a lot of people seem to forget to mention about the 10,000 hour theory is that it's 10,000 hours of purposeful, focused practice. The Art of Learning is all about doing that kind of practice.
Normally I wouldn't go off topic like this but I didn't see any way to contact you and I just wanted to tell you that:
a. Don't give up on finding friends. It may seem rough right now but these things have a way of changing over time so just persist and you'll succeed.
b. Lighten up. Smile a little. Instead of thinking crap like "I'm just not fun to be around", take a look about and realize "damn, what an amazing world. I have a rough time getting out and meeting people but when I stay in there are millions of people right here with me, just a few feet and two screens away."
I could never get started with Noir. I know that a lot of people use it, but it was never a good fit for me and I ended up using Compojure + libraries.
That said, I have been using bits and pieces of code from Noir - like the jcrypt bits - for a good while longer than lib-noir has existed, and Noir provided a wonderful resource for learning how certain types of things could be done so I'm sad to see it go.
Finally, I think the Clojure ecosystem really does need something else web framework-wise. I know a lot of people talk about how Clojure is a language of libraries and micro-libraries, and not a language of frameworks, but I think frameworks would go a long way towards speeding up (and making more pleasant) repetitive projects like web design. Re-gluing libraries together for every project gets tiring, and I think frameworks would help with this.
There was a talk I watched a while back about selling Clojure to enterprise (Neal Ford, maybe?) and one of the points was that appealing to the people who are consumed with getting stuff done (ie Delphi and Rails types) is a good way to spread a language because those people tend to leave a trail of projects behind them.
I don't think that Clojure has any frameworks that would appeal to these types of people (others might disagree). I'm not saying that Clojure's libraries are bad (many are quite good), just that they're not designed to get a project up and running as soon as possible. "Up and running fast" is a good option to have.
I don't think Mr. Atwood is suggesting that you bow to what the community wants, but rather that you implement systems to facilitate what they're already doing anyway.
That aside, and regardless of if SO is going about topic policing in the right way, I think this bit from a guest post[1] by Randy Farmer might hint at why they're doing what they do.
"As user-generated content grows, content moderation of some sort is always required: typically, either employees scan every submission or the site’s operators deploy a reputation system to identify bad content. Simply removing the bad content isn’t usually good enough-most sites depend on search engine traffic, on advertising revenue, or both. To get search traffic, external sites must link to the content, and that means the quality of the content has to be high enough to earn those links."
Okay- Question for you Cmod: Why do you think that keeping issues at all is a good thing?
Issues is one of those throwbacks to physical publishing. When you have to physically print and distribute, issues are a good thing... but online you can just publish an article when it's ready.
You mentioned how you think "edge" is important, so I would guess one of your arguments might be that a "publish on completion" stream is the exact opposite of edge. However, couldn't you just create artificial edges? For instance, showing the articles for the past 7 days?
Issues certainly create edges. They also allow for thematic grouping (which is good for editorial guidance).
Mainly though, they limit the number of times a reader is pinged. I'm a big advocate for grouping all notifications, not just 'content' — only notify me if #_notifications > x. Issues can be a kind of inherent frequency limiter.
That said, they're absolutely not necessary and most online publishing (rightly) has no concept of issues.
"However, couldn't you just create artificial edges? For instance, showing the articles for the past 7 days?"
Yes — and I think more apps should allow for this.
Facebook is a great example (IMO, but clearly not in the opinion of many others) of doing just this — taking a near infinite stream of one-offs and grouping them based on your Facebook use frequency / habits. Twitter's (Summify) summary articles are another good implementation of this: what happened in my stream yesterday?
It's not what I'd call high literature, but I found it very entertaining and have both Santiago and the sequel on paper.