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REPLs are awesome, but I have to admit that interactive notebooks are even awesome...r. For Elixir, I use its REPL called IEx frequently, but it can be cumbers
by bmitc 4y ago
REPLs are awesome, but I have to admit that interactive notebooks are even awesome...r.
For Elixir, I use its REPL called IEx frequently, but it can be cumbersome iterating on functions, especially since Elixir requires functions to be in modules and the REPL does not define a top-level module like some other languages' REPLs do. Although Elixir does allow one to recompile modules without having to restart IEx. But I have found that using Livebook, Elixir's interactive notebook application, is much more efficient for creating test code or prototyping modules. Then I can just copy and paste the module and/or functions back into my Elixir project. Livebook also allows you to attach Livebook to a Mix project.
.NET Interactive, which is a polyglot notebook and supports F#, is what I use for F# development as well. I personally feel any modern language needs REPL and notebook support, of some kind.
Notebook technology is pretty underutilized in my experience, particularly for learning and documentation.