Cursive: Developing an IDE for Clojure Code • Colin Fleming • YOW! 2018

Cursive is built on IntelliJ’s platform, providing strong project model support and sophisticated code analysis for Clojure development

Macros in Clojure present unique challenges for IDE development since they are arbitrary code that can modify syntax and semantics in complex ways

The IDE directly manipulates source code structure rather than text, offering semantic operations that reflect programmer intent rather than keystroke-level editing

Cursive uses source code analysis rather than runtime REPL evaluation, allowing it to provide better support for elements that don’t exist at runtime (like keywords)

Language-specific tooling is crucial - extracting functions and other refactorings need to understand the target language’s semantics

IDE features include project-wide indexing, navigation between program elements, refactoring support, and macro-aware code analysis

Extension API allows macro authors to teach Cursive about their macros for better IDE support

Balances between static analysis and REPL-based development, works with both Clojure and ClojureScript

Provides non-commercial free licensing for learning, academic work and open source development

Focus on making language tools that work with the semantic structure of programs rather than just text manipulation