> The official Clojure CLI, for example, is just plain confusing, and that's most people's first impression to the entire ecosystem. The config files, while they use the wonderful `.edn` format, are also not intuitive.

I completely agree; it is unfortunate they don't spend more time officially recommending leiningen.org. A beginner attempting to use the built-in CLI is going to lead to a poor first 3 months.