Mainly Data

An exploration of people and data management, the evolution of learning and the scientific method in an era of data-intensive distributed computing, and efficient knowledge capture and distribution using the web. Probably other stuff, too.

Jun 26

REPL

Python is an amazing language for many reasons, but code prototyping via the interactive interpreter has crippled my development speed in languages that do not have a REPL.

For this reason, I was ecstatic when I joined Facebook and learned they had developed their own interactive shell for PHP, phpsh. My Javascript development was hastened when I found Mozilla’s spidermonkey.

I also enjoyed learning Ruby and Erlang, because in Ruby, you have irb, and in Erlang, you have the Erlang shell, Eshell.

I recently came across CERN’s CINT, a REPL for C/C++. Finally! I have come to dread coding in these languages, especially C++, but I’m now looking forward to my next big C/C++ project. If you’ve used CINT, drop me a line.

I’ve also started looking for a nice Java REPL. There’s DynamicJava, and the Groovy interactive shell. Anything else I should try?

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