I still can't decide whether M-x ielm fits into an optimal elisp workflow.
The 'strict Emacs' view is that it's better to use buffers for everything, so you can edit and build up expressions there.
The 'tailored UI' view is that ielm is better, because it's a dedicated REPL.
miniblog.
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Claude asked me a question today: was I looking for an Emacs plugin (because I was talking about elisp) or a Rust program (because I have configured Rust preferences)?
I'm really impressed, it's rare to see LLMs ask follow-up questions.
(I wanted Emacs in this case.)
Today I learnt that Racket *intentionally* doesn't have a traditional REPL workflow. The authors were concerned about students not understanding the state between the current session and the code on disk.
(Arguably Jupyter has some of these features now.)
I've started keeping a list of particularly interesting bugs and patches that I've worked on: https://github.com/Wilfred/interesting-code
The time that I once removed *a single closing paren* in Emacs is still my favourite.