I guess the optimum has to be some kind of "area under the learning curve" but I think it's pretty clear if you made a binary choice optimising for people who already made the effort makes a lot more sense. Is Clojure really that bad? I don't know it, but I never had the impression there was an anti-newbie community. Sometimes people take these binary positions as a decision-making optimisation too; having that policy just simplifies a lot of discussions, perhaps.