The JACL reader is asynchronous, and so JACL can read characters from external sources (in-browser REPL, DevTools connection, websocket, experimental File API) without blocking the event loop and without relying on an external tool. JACL app artifacts will be created by dumping the Lisp image using a Lisp function.
Other than these technical differences, there seems to be a difference in "philosophy of use". I have the sense that the ClojureScript project does not emphasize or particularly support the idea of using self-hosted ClojureScript to build web apps.
Hum, I see. Yes, the maintainers of ClojureScript believe the bundle sizes would be too big if you always had to include the compiler with the APP. (also because the Google Closure compiler JS implementation is not as full featured as the Java one)
But it sounds in your case, maybe that can be removed before shipping? But used while developing?
Yes. My plan is for the image dumping facility to support tree-shaking and direct linking. I think tree-shaking by itself might produce reasonably-sized images, for my purposes at least. If not, the direct-linking would make Babel/Google Closure applicable.
But, with regards to your description of inhabiting the browser, what would differ with JACL say compared to self-hosted ClojureScript?