The other interesting problem is that the experts are using tools and concepts that are a long way away from a beginner and that can make it harder for beginners to learn. In Clojure when a beginner wants to accomplish a task their biggest problem is that they are solving the wrong problem or being pushed to deal with problems they don't understand.
Case in point the var/agent/ref system is fantastic and probably critical to how to think about Clojure projects - but the problems being solved by it are a long way away from the concerns of someone at the beginner-intermediate type level. They don't need to solve multithreading right now. They don't see their data model as an urgent priority.
Compare that to Python where most of the core language is (1) call function, solve problem or (2) feature does something you could already do but with a little less typing.
I prefer Clojure but it is easy to see that the lack of an opinionated onboarding process is going to hurt the language.
The advice the community usually gives is just use hashmaps. You can easily refactor when you need that more difficult functionality, because the language strongly disincentives mutable state, which is what usually causes issues.
Case in point the var/agent/ref system is fantastic and probably critical to how to think about Clojure projects - but the problems being solved by it are a long way away from the concerns of someone at the beginner-intermediate type level. They don't need to solve multithreading right now. They don't see their data model as an urgent priority.
Compare that to Python where most of the core language is (1) call function, solve problem or (2) feature does something you could already do but with a little less typing.
I prefer Clojure but it is easy to see that the lack of an opinionated onboarding process is going to hurt the language.