Emacs Starter Kit includes ELPA and a bunch packages from there: it is precisely just a starter kit with some setup made for you and some "skeleton" for your .emacs.d.

So, if you already have your Emacs and ELPA setup, it's easier to just install a couple packages, but if you are starting from scratch with Emacs (as I was), the starter kit is better.

By far. And use leiningen swank to configure the classpath for your REPL when working on a project.

http://wiki.github.com/technomancy/leiningen/emacs-integrati...