Repls

Read-eval-print-loop
Misc
- History of REPLs?
- There's a startup: replit.com
Papers
- A principled approach to REPL interpreters
  - https://maveme.github.io/assets/pdfs/Onward2020-preprint.pdf
  - Features considered essential for REPLs
    - Snippet execution
    - Snippet completion
    - Save and load (state, program, snippets)
    - Summary of effects – previous results
    - Command history
    - Help
    - Modify definitions
  - "Sequential Language"
    - Full input to a REPL is a valid program
    - Written as sequences of valid programs that manipulate context (configuration)
  - REPLs accumulate effects
  - "Exploring interpreters"
    - Allow reverting to a previous good state of the program
  - Interesting references
    - Refers to http://history.siam.org/sup/Fox_1960_LISP.pdf as probably the earliest known REPL.
    - Additionally, Pilot: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6905
- Programming with a Read-Eval-Synth-Loop
  - https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3428227
  - Looks interesting, and makes me wonder how effective copilot is in REPLs
- History of REPLs
  - https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/roov9z/history_when_was_the_repl_invented/
  - http://s3data.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/DEC.pdp_1.1964.102650371.pdf
- Also referred to as a means for exploratory programming
  - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-83978-9_2
- Notebook on top of an exploratory interpreter
  - https://ltvanbinsbergen.nl/files/theses/joey-lai-2021.pdf
  - "viscosity" ease of changing code while preserving design
- Clojure
  - https://clojure.org/guides/repl/enhancing_your_repl_workflow
    - https://cognitect.com/blog/2013/06/04/clojure-workflow-reloaded
    - Writing code to be REPL friendly
      
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Notes to self:
- Explore IPython REPLs; very few people seem to use them the way I do
  - discussion between going between production code and exploratory programming
  - I almost use them like a PHP endpoint – edit file, refresh page (call function), see changes
    - state is maintained that otherwise wasn't
- VSCode Jupyter REPLs and their adoption, any discussions online?
- Figure out the mechanics and shortcomings of %autoreload
  - What would an ideal autoreload look like
    - the idea of being able to revert to a good state is amazing
- Explore Web App REPLs – the tech is there, putting it together is missing
- Explore prominent REPLs and their histories, as well as their forms of interaction; go only for widely adopted variants (ie not pasted on after the fact)
  - Lisps – get a lisp machine?
    - Clojure
  - Forth
  - Erlang
  - Javascript
  - Smalltalk (why isn't this considered a REPL)
- Standard shell is also a REPL? yes/no?
  - What about SQL
  - Any CLI that allows interactive programming?
- Debugger vs repl?
  - is there a difference?