Counterpoint: I work at the REPL of scripting languages roughly as much as I do the shell prompt.
Using your editor to drive a shell is a huge win because it: (a) flips the development bit in your brain, and (b) creates a shared history across all your machines.
Combine that with literate programming and you have a `duck-talking` history of every development or outage response tied to what you actually did.
Didn't mean to come across as REPLs consisted only items in the set of { programming , shells }.