> But the fact is that despite its lack of mature tools, Clojure is more newbie-friendly than CL.

As a newbie, I have to disagree. Clojure has a ton of syntax to get used to, and to make it useful, you have to learn all the neat Java libraries on top of it. I found more resources and nice explanations for aspects of CL, and when I compare it against Clojure, I find I miss a lot of the nice functions and tools for CL.

Here is a fun newbie point on it: In the first hour of playing with CL, I learned how to debug it. Not so with Clojure. Trace? Step? Maybe I should be using harder-to-find online tutorials for Clojure?

Anyway, it boils down to opinion as to what is "easier". I was looking for something with batteries included that would compile to a distributable executable and be super flexible; CL fit the bill with the sbcl implementation. It successfully pulled me away from other fun languages, like Erlang.