REPLs suck, I want something block oriented
Not for the first time, it struck me today that while they are powerful for tinkering and exploration, line-oriented REPLs like 'irb' in Ruby mostly suck. Ruby's a block-oriented language, and you can't do meaningful exploration in a line-oriented environment.
I never had the luxury of working in an Oberon OS -- the video shows Bluebottle, a later successor -- but I really wish for one while trying to prototype code in REPLs. (I did write Oberon, however -- on the Amiga, no less!)
The Oberon programming language itself is a compiled language, and thus not suitable for REPLs, but what I'm wishing for is to take the idea of the Ruby or Clojure REPL and smush it together with the text GUI of Oberon OS.
If you've not come across the concept before, the idea is that you edit and run programs in place on the screen. To quote the Wikipedia page on Oberon:
Oberon has a text user interface (TUI). It combines the point-and-click convenience of a graphical user interface (GUI) with the linguistic strength of a command line interface (CLI) and is closely tied to naming conventions of the Oberon language. Any text appearing on the screen can be edited and used as command input. Nothing like a prompt is required.
For a wonderful overview of some of Oberon's history, and what it was (and is, with Bluebottle) like to use the system, check out this article by Lukas Mathis.
