[agentgt]

Yes I think you make an excellent point but more so because the output of the REPL session is much better than a typical REPL session of just plain text.

Sort of in a round about way but in my original comment my hope was to elicit the discussion that modern development tools of ide visualization + debugger + hot code swapping are not far off from traditional REPLs and in same cases better because the inputs and outputs are better.

That is traditional REPLs (ie commandline with maybe some readline capabilities) I think aren't that much better the inputs/outputs aren't that good.

To your point on the static analysis I agree but a truly interactive development system that allows google-esque querying I think is far more than a REPL or at least the REPLs I know/knew of but I guess REPL definition can be somewhat nebulous these days.

[abhirag]

The interactive development workflow in Idris is best described as type driven development and the focus seems to be on making the REPL an interface where an intelligent dialog can happen in between the programmer and the compiler, with the compiler trying to nudge you in the right direction. It is kinda fun, you should definitely check it out[1].

And regarding your point about the modern IDE workflow, I personally think that the sweet spot is somewhere in between, I personally prefer having a REPL process in the background I can interact with while still writing code in my source file and a REPL kept open as a scratch space where I can experiment freely without messing up my source code, I feel much better experimenting in a REPL, but to each his own I suppose :)

Jupyter Notebook is a completely different beast though, modern REPL + literate programming, what's not to love.

[1] -- (https://www.manning.com/books/type-driven-development-with-i...)

[agentgt]

I have been meaning to look at Idris for so long! Thanks for the inspiration to move that higher up the queue :)

[abhirag]

Definitely start with the book I mentioned, it is by Edwin Brady, he leads the development of Idris. I am reading it right now and it is an enjoyable read :)