Depends on your structure. Usually slow reloading is due to more components updating than needed

For example, if you have a header and a footer and in each of your views you are reloading the header and footer instead of just the middle content

it's pretty bare bones thus far... my reagent app was super bloated by comparison

It's not about the size; it's about how it's structured

What's the reagent equivalent of this?

Is this a function returning a function?

It is, but I believe I've found the way

:on-change #(reset! value (-> % .-target .-value))

@whoneedszzz value is a little bit of an unfortunate name for an atom.

Take that up with Reagent: https://reagent-project.github.io/

It's not my code. I always use proper naming conventions