True, but it is my understanding that in those cases they were reimplementing existing services, where the precise requirements are already known. Exploration i

True, but it is my understanding that in those cases they were reimplementing existing services, where the precise requirements are already known. Exploration isn’t for quick-and-dirty programs, but for finding the right solution in a wide space of possibilities where you don’t even know what all the requirements are yet. For example, consider programming a game. If your only concern is putting triangles on the screen, then there are some well-known solutions that you can adopt that will work great and you can do that in any language you want. But gameplay mechanics are a different beast entirely; inventing (or discovering) something new and fun is exploratory. You’ll benefit most from a dynamic language where you can change your code rapidly, and features like strict typing and lifetimes are not so helpful. For this a language like Common Lisp, with garbage collection, a REPL, gradual typing, just-in-time compilation, and support for multiple programming paradigms is ideal. Or Javascript, or whatever.