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Your observations are valid, and need to be kept in mind when developing in an exploratory, interactive way. Your alarm seems a little overblown. Maybe it refl

Your observations are valid, and need to be kept in mind when developing in an exploratory, interactive way. Your alarm seems a little overblown. Maybe it reflects a particular bad experience? I've delivered a bunch of products built in the way I prefer to work, and it's been a long time since I've had the problems you're describing. Maybe that's because I ran into such such problems early in my career and learned ways of handling them. And yeah, if you just iterate and explore, you can wind up in lacunae. You do need to develop some actual goal and a vision of how to get there. Interactive development can be really helpful for the exploring part, but it can't pick your goals for you. In short, interactive development is a way of working that's good for some cases and some people (me, for instance). It's not a cure-all or an objectively superior methodology for all people or all cases. I don't want it to take over the world. I just want it to continue to be an option because it's the way I prefer to work.

O_H_E 6y ago
Oh man, I appreciate your pragmatism and open-mindness. It is refreshing to see someone advocate for something without trying to "take over the world" and proving others wrong. Thanks for sharing your experience amd positivity with the world.
Folcon 6y ago
Echoing this, I'd really like it to be an option in other languages, because it's just a pleasant way to work and it's nice to have the option.
discardable_dan 6y ago
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I wrote up my comment just to point out some of the weaknesses I have identified in REPL-based development, and how to watch out for those pitfalls as a program scales. For what it's worth, I agree with your sentiment, and believe REPL-based development should always be an option. I have a lot of success using REPL-based "prototyping", even in python, where I will quickly try/test something at a REPL before scaling it up, and having that utility to try/test/experiment quickly is often invaluable (especially if the standard build time is on the scale of minutes).

O_H_E 6y ago

Oh man, I appreciate your pragmatism and open-mindness. It is refreshing to see someone advocate for something without trying to "take over the world" and proving others wrong. Thanks for sharing your experience amd positivity with the world.

Folcon 6y ago

Echoing this, I'd really like it to be an option in other languages, because it's just a pleasant way to work and it's nice to have the option.

discardable_dan 6y ago

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I wrote up my comment just to point out some of the weaknesses I have identified in REPL-based development, and how to watch out for those pitfalls as a program scales. For what it's worth, I agree with your sentiment, and believe REPL-based development should always be an option. I have a lot of success using REPL-based "prototyping", even in python, where I will quickly try/test something at a REPL before scaling it up, and having that utility to try/test/experiment quickly is often invaluable (especially if the standard build time is on the scale of minutes).