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Software development topics I've changed my mind on

(chriskiehl.com)
873 points belter | 2 comments | 05 Feb 25 09:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ertucetin ◴[05 Feb 25 11:36 UTC] No.42947096[source]▶
> REPLs are not useful design tools (though, they are useful exploratory tools)

I disagree with this. I’m a Clojure dev, and most of the time, I use the REPL to iterate on features, fix bugs, and refactor, thanks to the fast feedback loop.

I used to be a Java dev—oh god, restarting the whole app after every change made me want to shoot myself in the head. Now, I use the REPL to build what I want and then move on. This brings joy back to programming.

I’m not saying other languages are bad, but working with Clojure is more enjoyable for me. I’m at least 2-3 times faster than I was with Java. Of course, there are techniques you need to know to write efficient and idiomatic functional code.

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1. cess11 ◴[05 Feb 25 12:30 UTC] No.42947566[source]▶
I'm a heavy REPL/interactive shell user so when I do Java I abuse the testing framework, basically I put my sketches in unit tests and run those. The feedback loop is pretty tight, close to what I get in some other languages, whatever happens behind the scenes in IntelliJ it's much shorter than a full recompile and boot.

Supposedly there are some Java shells around but I haven't tried them out.

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2. skydhash ◴[05 Feb 25 13:05 UTC] No.42947931[source]▶
You either REPL or do TDD.