[tlug] Constructed state, unit tests and REPLs

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull.stephen.fw@example.com>]

Curt J. Sampson writes:

 > In fact, this is why I generally don't use REPLs at all (except for looking
 > up documentation) in languages like Python: it's usually easier and faster
 > to write or tweak a test that does whatever little experimentation I want
 > to do than to type it in by hand into a REPL. (It's definitely a lot faster
 > the _second_ time I want to run it.)

Jupyter (or even just IPython) helps a lot if I'm fiddling with
task-oriented code.  I use it with R and Maxima now, too.

I still use the REPL when I'm working through stuff on Python-Ideas,
though.