As is often the case Reinier - you seem to have got your enthusiasm making 
statements that are far to over general.

Here is the history from my development machine (not one of the ones I use 
for Scala training) along with the number of times I have started the scala 
REPL

dick@Apollo:~$ history | wc -l
500
dick@Apollo:~$ history | grep scala | wc -l
31
dick@Apollo:~$ history | grep "sbt console" | wc -l
40

I am a pretty experienced Scala developer now, with about 3 years behind 
me, and I start the Scala REPL to try stuff out every day I am developing, 
often several times a day (assuming I don't just leave it running 
constantly). REPLs are far from pointless in real life, and I would not 
want to use a language without one. Prior to Scala, I used to use Python 
every chance I got and I used to (and still do) fire up the python shell at 
the drop of a hat to try out some idea or other. A REPL may not appear to 
be all that useful to you, maybe because you are used to using languages 
that don't offer one, but that doesn't make it true for everyone else.

Incidentally, sbt console starts up the current project with all jars and 
classes in the project already on the REPL class path. Combined with tab 
completion in the Scala REPL, it is an excellent way of trying out ideas 
and exploring unknowns, like interactively experimenting with third party 
ReST web services (I practically developed our interface to confluence this 
way, using the REPL to send requests and explore the resulting XML until I 
got what I needed) or just getting a feel for a new API.

I don't use it as my only tool, and I don't doubt that you don't find them 
interesting, but I also can't let a statement like "REPLs are pointless in 
real life" when I use them all the time.

Dick


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