Atom is currently defined as final and ARef.validate() is package-private. This makes it impossible to define a subclass of an Atom and difficult subclass ARef (if validate() needs to be called).
I propose removing the final modifier from Atom, making ARef.validate() protected and also making Atom.state protected (it is currently package-private).
I'm not sure if there is a specific reason why Atom is final - if this is for performance reasons or to prevent someone from doing strange things with Atom's, but I can see a use case for sub-classing it.
One use-case is to create reactive Atom that allows derefs to be tracked (as in reagent). I have some Clojure (not Clojurescript) code where I'm trying to play with this idea and I've had to copy the entire Atom class (because it's sealed) and place it in the clojure.lang package (because ARef.validate() is package-private): https://github.com/aaronc/freactive/blob/master/src/java/clojure/lang/ReactiveAtom.java. In addition, I need to copy the defns for swap! and reset! into my own namespace. This seems a bit inconvenient.
