I think the basic idea is sound. If all you're after is learning to program and running little toy programs, then web based REPLs are a great choice. My primar

I think the basic idea is sound. If all you're after is learning to program and running little toy programs, then web based REPLs are a great choice. My primary development environment is vim combined with CLI commands (and some wrapping with vim plugins to simplify the workflow). However, when I want to play around with something in Go to figure out how it works I will often go to The Go Playground (https://play.golang.org/ https://play.golang.org/) and play around there. However, as soon as I'm done (and maybe shared my findings with a peer, which I can't do as easily with my local vim + CLI environment) I'm back to my regular development environment because very little that I work on is trivial enough to stay in Go Playground. All that said, I've seen plenty of developers who seem to get by sticking to the basic feature level of Notepad. Whatever works for you.