What do you all think of Clojure's "REPL-driven development" method?

[OvermindDL1]

@peerreynders

Unlike Lisp, Clojure embraces immutability - save where mutability is necessary, like for Java interop (unless I completely misunderstood your meaning).

Wrong meaning.

I mean that you can, for example, redefine a function and the new version is used from then on (old references still reference the old function, it is ‘safe’ in that way).

REPL driven development is basically you write code in the REPL, it is put in the system in real-time, any time you save you are saving a ‘dump’ of the system (no source code), and you can pick it up where it left off at any time. This was very popular in business distributing LISP since anyone could just spool up the server from the state and they could introspect the system, but no code distributed.

@michalmuskala

You can totally define modules in iex (unlike in Erlang’s shell).

Easily yep, it just lacks the ability to write out the running ‘state’ of the system.

@peerreynders

This I remember doing in Clojure - essentially it felt like manipulating an in-memory representation of the code that would be run through the reader next time I executed something. In iex I’m not sure I would know where to start … in iex I basically stick to c/2, r/1.

Yeah the LISP state was utter magic compared to anything else out at the time, even compared to today it is magic. ^.^