I wanted to try Easel but there were no instructions how. This is how I got it running:

  git clone git@github.com:phronmophobic/easel.git
  clj -X:deps prep
  clj
  # now in repl
  => ((requiring-resolve 'com.phronemophobic.easel/run))

>While the JVM solves lots of hard problems, it has one major weakness, the UI libraries provided by the JVM (Swing and JavaFX) are clunky and dated.

I also feel this; it's what puts me off writing GUI apps in Clojure. I have hope that natively compiled Clojure implementations like Jank that could interact with C or C++ libraries could help with this.

i made a GUI with cljfx which uses JavaFX and I didnt really hit any issues (save for i have one bug on startup that ive had trouble ironing out). The app is snappy and feels as native as anything else

Ended with a very modular functional GUI program

the only thing i wasnt super happy about is that i couldnt package it as a simple .bin/.exe bc the jpackage system forces you into making an installer/application (its been a few years since, so its possible theres a graal native solution now)

i highly recommend cljfx. Its the opposite of clunky

https://github.com/humbleui/humbleui

Most of the work (and the recent updates) seem to be in the two main subcomponents

https://github.com/HumbleUI/JWM

https://github.com/HumbleUI/Skija

Coincidentally, lately I have been thinking of making an IDE using something like Theia or CodeMirror but am holding off because of time for my other projects.

> why existing IDEs miss the mark? There are definitely lots of IDEs that do cool things, but are missing one or more items from my wish list.

With respect to data orientation, most IDEs don't represent information as immutable data. If all internal state uses immutable data, it's much easier and safer to share. If everything is mutable, then sharing data is hard, which why most IDEs don't have pervasive sharing. As an example of an IDE that does provide access to data pervasively, but makes very different trade-offs than Easel, see https://gtoolkit.com/.

Using an IDE where all the tools take data and share data has dramatically changed my workflow. You can sort of get this feeling when you pipe together a bunch of shell commands `find ... | grep ... | tee ... | nc ... | etc...`. However, I think 1) sharing data rather than strings and 2) having a 2D graphical user interface is a big upgrade from piping shell commands.

So it must have tools save, manipulate and visualize conveniently (pretty printing, folding etc) the values of vars that contain nested maps, sequences, sets, etc.

Existing clojure IDEs like CIDER for emacs or Calva for VSCode do that too, and it is a must have to have a nice experience with the language

- It's much harder for components in separate processes to share data efficiently

- Window managers tend to be OS dependent. I want something that is cross-platform

- Coordinating components in separate, asynchronous processes is hard

- Working with OS window APIs is more annoying than writing a layout library

I keep telling myself that if everyone just used tmux or a good emulator they could manage the tabs and layouts, but then I tell myself I just want this to be a tiling window manager as an distraction free OS for development, give me nothing but a terminal and an assistant.

Thanks for the write up OP, I've been going back and forth on whether or not I want to build something just for myself or spend time doing it for potentially other use cases. I keep coming back to that I need to dog food the shit out of this before I show it to anyone.

Where tools are dependencies and the system composes them together to create a sum much greater than the parts.