Clojure was the first lisp that I could seriously get into. I have a java background and the familiarity of JVM was partly helpful when I was learning it. I guess for people who are new to both java and lisp, it may be bit harder.<p>The language changing fast wasn't a concern to me then, and I was putting lot of time to keeping up with the changes by lurking in the mailing list and irc. It was fascinating to watch language design happen in front of my eyes. I think newbies would do fine with clojure (particularly at its current relatively stable state). I guess it just takes a bit of an effort.