Anyone ever thought of making Spacemacs easier to use for Clojure beginners? Perhaps like a permanent insert mode like a regular text editor instead of Vim/Emacs/Hybrid bindings?

So anytime I open a buffer I would have to get out of insert mode to move around?

Well, if you do not want the advantages of emacs/vim-bindings, just use vscode. I see no advantage in dumbing down Spacemacs, giving up core principles.

Spacemacs is very bad for someone without vim/emacs experience. because of the learning curve. I would suggest Cursive instead, hoping that we have a community/free version in the near future.

Its honestly not that bad. You just have to stick with it for a week

@dijonkitchen I started writing a book to help make Spacemacs easier for Clojure beginners. There are so many useful features that I wouldnt want to remove from people, so a cut down version of Spacemacs doesnt make sense to me. I appreciate Vim can be a challenge, so I have tried to help with that too. I dont think Spacemacs is as hard to learn as IntelliJ or Eclipse (assuming you have never used them before)

I’d say learning Clojure and Spacemacs vim simultaneously is not a good idea, but learning Vim can seriously enhance productivity once it’s understood. “Vim: Code at the Speed of Thought” is a great book for learning vim.

There are quite a few alternative editors to using Spacemacs and knowing a few basics of Vim does help alot. I wouldn't recommend Spacemacs or Emacs unless you are going to use it for everything, that is where you get the most benefit. Then its definitely worth the investment in learning. I also wouldnt recommend using Spacemacs with the Emacs keybindings, as they are so much harder to learn.

I always recommend to people learning Clojure that they use the editor they are most familiar with. If they have never used an editor (new to coding) then there is https://repl.it/. The editors I recommend to choose from are http://Atom.io, VSCode, Spacemacs, or IntelliJ https://clojurebridgelondon.github.io/workshop/development-tools/

Personally I have always found IntelliJ very confusing, as was Eclipse, even after 20 years of Java development. VS Code is very nice editor and the developer of Calva is building a plugin that is very similar in concept to CIDER and they are very helpful in the slack channel. I struggle with the keybindings for http://Atom.io and ProtoREPL (and the need for a dependency), although Proton gives a nice Spacemacs light way to use Atom and ProtoREPL.

I dont think there is a problem with learning Vi, Spacemacs and Clojure all at once, you just need to set your expectations on your progress. There is a lot of each of those that can be learnt gradually (as I have discovered over the last few years).

Basic file editing and project navigation are the crucial first steps. When I first started using spacemacs I was really off put by the fact that if I forgot I wasn't in insert mode and I typed something that it put me into some random mode that I didn't know how to escape from.

Still happens to me actually. If I think I am focused on a chrome and I do CMD shift n... for incognito window but I am in fact focused in spacemacs it will open a new hidden window... bizarre

Yeah, I’m thinking about this more from the perspective of Clojure, as a language, and making it easier to adopt for beginners. As much as we may like Vim/Emacs, we already know it, but newcomers may not and that may be a barrier high enough for them to not explore Clojure as well. While other editors can use Clojure, they aren’t really second-class citizens when it comes to the REPL integrations and just everyone else’s experience if they ever need help. I’m just saying it might be interesting to have a “beginner” mode where they can just learn one thing and learn it well then be inspired to learn the rest of the ecosystem.

Has anyone noticed spacemacs hanging when using SPC f t or SPC p t? It happens after switching back to spacemacs and then using said commands. It just freezes so I have kill the process and restart spacemacs.