Dare Obasanjo sings the praises of working with a REPL - comparing it favorably with C# using Visual Studio:

Working with Python was a joy. I especially loved programming with a REPL . If I had a question about what some code does, it's pretty easy to write a few one or two liners to figure it out. Contrast this with  using Web searches, trawling through MSDN documentation or creating a full blown program just to test the out some ideas when using C# and Visual Studio. I felt a lot more productive even though all I was using was Emacs and a DOS prompt. 

Now, how productive do you think you can be working with a REPL that comes with an IDE built in itself? Where you can save the state of your running system any time you want/need to?

You can give it a try anytime you want: the water is just fine on the Smalltalk side of the street.

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