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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

Then it's possible an even broader term is needed, but "REPL", to non-lispers' minds in 2021, means narrowly "a prompt where you can type code and then hit enter and see a result". I think "hot-reloading" would be a dramatically more descriptive term even if it isn't perfectly descriptive.

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Yes, I've been saying "live interactive development" instead of REPL more recently, and I think it conveys the idea much better. Since in Lisps, a REPL means:

> a live integrated inside an application REPL that lets you evaluate and hot-swap every single line of code at will and on-demand all at runtime without ever needing to restart the application, while also being able to inspect the runtime state at will

Live Editable Environment? Live Editable Program(ming)? Live Editable Programming Environment?

Just what instantly comes to mind. No recommendations.

Live patching.

We do have a term for it, it's Image based programming. The primary means of interacting with said image is quite often the REPL, and so the two may have become synonymous.

To me that term also implies that images are the primary means of distribution, as in (most) Smalltalks. That said, it's still probably a better term than REPL for the Clojure experience.

Yes, didn't mean to imply it was unique to Lisp. And when there is little distinction between what you distribute and what you develop in then it's very apt.

Right, but there is a distinction in Clojure between what you distribute and what you develop. You aren't shipping an image, you're shipping compiled source code.

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