Do you have a habit of referring to yourself in plural, or do you typically like to generalize things based on your personal experiences?
I personally know many Clojurists who never had problems you're describing - hundreds of people. Sure, that could be the case of survivorship bias, perhaps I just don't befriend people who struggled with getting into Clojure specifically in a way you're describing. But like they say: "Those who are willing to make the effort will find the solutions. Those who aren't will find the excuses."
Clojure undeniably had challenges in the past, and still has some today. But not the things you're talking about. This is literally not an exaggeration - it's as easy as installing Calva extention for VSCode - that's all one needs to mess around with Clojure.