True, this form of REPL development is not as good for large multiple file projects. I think that is OK. I start building software from the bottom, and a REPL session gets me one low level function written and debugged. I switch to using an IDE for “whole project” development.

For Clojure, I use all three: Emacs+Cider, VSCode+Calva, and IntelliJ+Cursive. I get something different from all three environments.