From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2007-01-25T21:56:04+09:00
Subject: Re: REPL driven programming

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 06:31:17PM +0900, SonOfLilit wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> this is a spawn of "ruby text editor for beginner", in essence, because that
> thread inspired the question in me.
> 
> LISP has SLIME.
> 
> With SLIME, alternating between REPL and source code files is trivial - you
> have a shortcut to send a s-exp from one to the other and it all works great
> together.
> 
> I wondered if that kind of programming style is supported in other
> languages.
> 
> So I googled. I found many bloggers hail "repl-driven software development"
> as a better-than-yours style that everyone should know or they are COBOL
> monkeys, but nobody really explained what "REPL-driven software development"
> is.
> 
> From a bit of work with SLIME (and screencasts of others using it), I
> understand how some automation makes it really easy to play with your code
> while working on it (it's supposed to be a Smalltalk thing, too, but I find
> the tools very non-productive - at least in squeak - with there being no
> easy way to navigate the code with the keyboard and hop to the correct
> places and the mouse is a must for almost every operation) but I don't see
> how a REPL alone makes it possible. Some more automation, in my opinion, is
> needed - an interface that supports alternating file and REPL easily and
> gives you a full IDE (code completion, macros) that is consistent in both.
> 
> Am I wrong?
> 
> If I'm correct, do such tools exist for other languages?
> 
Emacs also has ruby-inferior mode which you can use to give you a very
SLIME-like experience with ruby.
> Either way, could anyone who uses the REPL for more than experimentation
> with APIs elaborate on the way they use it to assist in their programming?
> This really interests me, and I'm sure others could learn a lot from it.
> 
> Aur Saraf