Comment by dustingetz

a problem with a repl-centric approach to crud apps is that the repl is not reactive. It is a good fit for request/response pure function backend programming. But UIs are not pure functions, they have a deeply effectful nature, and being reactive all those effects are highly “situated” if you will (to use Rich Hickey’s word). IMO this is a severe impedance mismatch at the core of Clojure’s design. We simultaneously want to write small functions that can be explored in the REPL and we also want to write in-situ functions with complex dependencies in scope. ClojureScript users are running in circles for a decade trying to turn the latter into the former to make the REPL work again but it’s a mirage, the REPL is just not a fit for a deeply situated problem domain. An example of this impedance surfacing in backend programming is a nontrivial map/reduce pipeline. What is the shape of the document at stage six? How do I manifest one to play at the REPL? Clojure doesn’t have great answers to this.