I agree. To me tools.build is not a replacement for Lein at all. Lein is more intuitive to most beginners. It's much easier to tell someone to run `lein new some-app` and `lein run` / `lein uberjar`, than to tell them to configure their deps.edn file so they can run some alias with the `-X:...` / `-M` arg to create and run a new project (and who knows which dependency to use / configure to build an uberjar).
For experienced Clojure developers this might seem trivial, but new people (in my experience) are very impatient and want to get started ASAP. Honestly, who can blame them? Why does it have to be so difficult in this day and age?
Another thing I hear Clojure developers say is that beginners can start with Lein, but once you get more experienced with Clojure you can switch to tools.build. Why does a build tool need to be so unusable that you can only use it when you become more familiar with the language? You don't see that with Ruby's Bundler, or Elixir's Mix. They just work, just like Lein does.
For experienced Clojure developers this might seem trivial, but new people (in my experience) are very impatient and want to get started ASAP. Honestly, who can blame them? Why does it have to be so difficult in this day and age?
Another thing I hear Clojure developers say is that beginners can start with Lein, but once you get more experienced with Clojure you can switch to tools.build. Why does a build tool need to be so unusable that you can only use it when you become more familiar with the language? You don't see that with Ruby's Bundler, or Elixir's Mix. They just work, just like Lein does.