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It looks like Lisp and Clojure programmers often develop programs directly in the REPL. cf. Clojure Development: IDE or REPL?
My question is, why isn't this approach more common in Ruby, via irb? Is this just a cultural difference, or are there structural (language-specific) reasons why REPL-centric development is more common with Lisps than with languages like Ruby and Python?
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IRB is the built-in Ruby REPL that every Ruby developer is familiar with. It doesn't have many features, but it does what it's supposed to. You type in code & you get the results back.
REPL driven development is the foundation of working with Clojure effectively. The REPL is an instant feedback workflow that continually runs your code without the need to manually run an explicit compile-build-run cycle. The REPL contains the live application to which you interact with by calling (evaluating) code.
Lisp syntax seems to lend itself very nicely for a combined REPL-and-source-file approach. It is much easier to move code snippets around programmatically when the textual limits of each form are clear.
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