How do you suggest that one should get past the initial hardships in learning clojure, assuming one is willing to put the needed effort? I've always wanted to learn a lisp and clojure seemed good, but couldn't find a good tutorial for lisp beginners.
The only advice that has helped me learn Clojure was: do not travel the road alone. Coming from a strong OO background, getting started posts/videos, REPL tutorials, and books only helped me to the point of reading and running Clojure. I agree with dizzystar that the documentation needs serious work, because I find myself reading the source for insight into how I should use things, or structure codebases. I think highly of Clojure, but don't expect it to be easy. Keep tabs with http://clojure.org/cheatsheet and http://clojuredocs.org open at all times, a REPL available at all times, and either use emacs/*nix or accept being in the suburbs.
I wish I had an answer, but I wasn't a Lisp beginner when I started with Clojure.
I'd definitely suggest using Linux, installing Clojure + Leiningen2, and getting familiar with the REPL. Also, getting Clojure Programming by Chad Emerick, et.al, is a solid first step to at least getting some things started.
Learning Clojure is like any other language: if you want to really dive in, you have to think of a project to get started in and take it step-by-step. I have not written algorithms or done scripting with Clojure, so I don't know how that stuff would work out. I feel there are better languages for that kind of stuff.
