Something I find problematic about the various implementations of Clojure is the lack of specs to determine a common ground.
Clojurescript doesn't use the same conventions in import/require statements: you're supposed to import macros using :require-macros or :refer-macros (I'm not even sure anymore). Conversely, `:refer :all` was banned in a prescriptivist attempt at fixing Clojure "mistakes", the rationale behind this decision being that with `:refer :all` it's not always obvious what namespace required symbols come from. Yet, with a REPL or a language server, it's very easy to get that info.
I agree with your criticism but those "mistakes" sadly come with inheriting implementation details of the hosted environment. As far as I understand, ClojureScript couldn't workaround some JavaScript limitations regarding macros and thus had to go with `:require-macros`.
A workaround is using Reader Conditionals (https://clojure.org/reference/reader#_reader_conditionals) and specifying platform differences where they matter, but it's awkward to say the least. What most projects do is to separate "common" namespaces and use the `.cljc` extension to indicate they're multi platform, and keep platform specific things in namespaces with `.clj`, `.cljs`, etc.
>What most projects do is to separate "common" namespaces and use the `.cljc` extension to indicate they're multi platform, and keep platform specific things in namespaces with `.clj`, `.cljs`, etc.
This is exactly what I witnessed when finding the example above.
Out of frustration, I tried patching shadow-cljs one afternoon and was able to implement :refer :all as well as automatically generating :require-macros when needed to some extent, but I haven't put the time to make it work fully. I don't think this is a limitation caused by the lack of a Clojurescript compiler that can run in a Javascript runtime. In short, I don't think this is an essential limitation of the way the language is hosted within its target language, unlike things like Vars, which are not introspectable at runtime in js.
Legit complaint, can't really argue, yet, at the same time, using various Clojure dialects and Clojure-like Fennel requires so much less mental overhead. Even switching between Javascript and Typescript is not at the same level of unsophistication. I feel biased, but targeting JVM, Node, Browser, Bash, Lua, and now Go using a single set of idioms and patterns feels so much nicer and less frustrating. Even with all the little quirks and differences.
Oh yeah I definitely lost an hour debugging why something doesn't work in ClojureScript: it turns out I used :refer rather than :refer-macro. It's still possible to use :refer, but it requires some changes to the library such as https://github.com/Engelberg/instaparse/commit/0cd039659dc76...
Clojurescript doesn't use the same conventions in import/require statements: you're supposed to import macros using :require-macros or :refer-macros (I'm not even sure anymore). Conversely, `:refer :all` was banned in a prescriptivist attempt at fixing Clojure "mistakes", the rationale behind this decision being that with `:refer :all` it's not always obvious what namespace required symbols come from. Yet, with a REPL or a language server, it's very easy to get that info.
The point I want to make is that because of this porting Clojure code to Clojurescript implies a lot of inessential changes to the ns forms in your project. E.g: https://github.com/kachayev/muse/blob/8db4d5de82a8acccb4486c..., but I've done far worse.
It doesn't need to be that way.