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.

The "Clojure Programming"[1] book is good. Also "The Joy of Clojure"[2], to ease you into the philosophy/mindset of Clojure.

There's also http://www.braveclojure.com which is still a work in progress but it's good for diving in.

[1]: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920013754.do [2]: http://joyofclojure.com

The Clojure koans are a good place to start - https://github.com/functional-koans/clojure-koans

I think this has a great set of links: http://www.quora.com/Clojure/What-are-the-best-resources-for...

The koans would be a good starting point: https://github.com/functional-koans/clojure-koans