Ep 044: What's So Different About Clojure's REPL?

Each week, we answer a different question about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to [email protected], or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the question is: "What's so different about Clojure's REPL?" We evaluate what a REPL really is and show that it's much more about the developer experience than simply calculating values.

Selected quotes:

• "The Clojure REPL is your window into the state of a running application."

• "It's a much larger, broader kind of experience."
• "It's funny to have mutable programs and immutable data, but that's what Clojure gives you."
• "The fact that the REPL can read expressions and run them becomes one of it's least interesting attributes."

Related episodes

• 012: Embrace the REPL
• 013: Connect the REPL
• 014: Fiddle with the REPL