On 11 Sep 2009, at 4:26 pm, Brian Harvey wrote: >> The REPL is first and foremost a programming >> convenience for interactive development. It is not meant to be an >> end user >> interface, and it is not meant to be some "primary means" of >> deploying >> software programs, at least not in most cases. Usually, software is >> deployed in files, and not typed in manually or loaded through the >> REPL. > > I categorically reject this view. You are thinking of C, or C++, or > Java. > > What makes Lisp Lisp is two non-negotiable things: lambda, and the > repl. > Compilers are negotiable. Efficiency is negotiable. The REPL is not.
Hmmm. Says who? I think the REPL is excellent, but as somebody who writes applications that run on servers or in embedded systems, I think in a non-REPLy way. I bring up a REPL for debugging and experimenting and to be a calculator, but my development cycle involves editing source code in a text file and then (in effect) dumping it into a virgin environment every time to run it, to ensure that my program will work for real when it's run for real, IYSIM. Or am I just boring? :-) ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym Work: http://www.snell-systems.co.uk/ Play: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/ Blog: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/author/alaric/ _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
