[Gene_Parmesan]

Who in their right mind would implement retained mode on top of imgui? I'm really struggling to see the thought process that would lead someone to go down that path. It's not like there's a dearth of retained mode GUI frameworks.

Really, the reason people get excited about dear-imgui is the fantastic ease with which it allows you to create debug/dev GUI stuff. This is primarily of benefit in game development, which is where imgui arose and where the vast majority of dear-imgui users work. Once you have it set up, you can place code to create GUI elements anywhere within your application, allowing you to place widgets that let you tune values while your code is running in shockingly little time.

It's not really a good fit for standard application development, though. Primarily this is because it is "bring-your-own-rendering-pipeline." If you know how to set up a simple opengl context this isn't all that difficult, but it's not a route that most app devs are going to want to follow (especially because it kind of assumes you are using a game-loop-type architecture based around a framerate). Some people do use it for user-facing UIs, but that's not where its strengths lie.