Like slime for vim

"- you start irb

- you start a text editor (vim, textmate, emacs, …)

- you do a few tests in irb

- you copy and paste to a text editor

- you clean things up in the text editor

- you copy and paste back to irb

- you make a mistake

- you fix things up in the text editor

- you hesitate copying and pasting, because it’s painful now

- you write some tests

- you exit irb and run the tests to do your experiments"

Totally reminds me of those infomercials where people sprain their wrists trying to open a jar or crack an egg all over their kitchen.

Should also mention ClojureBox <http://clojure.bighugh.com/>. It's a great timesaver if you want to test clojure.

"Clojure Box is an all-in-one installer for Clojure on Windows. It's inspired by the Lispbox: you simply install and run this one thing, and you get a REPL and all the syntax highlighting and editing goodies from clojure-mode and Slime, plus all the power of Emacs under the hood."

To get a real REPL in vim: http://code.google.com/p/conque/

The written method is old, but good. It makes VIM a usable Lisp environment, and it's good for any interpreter with a REPL. Recommended.