Interactive Programming

Traditional programming languages and development environments often use a Edit, Compile, Run Cycle. In this environment, the programmer modifies the code, compiles it, and then runs it to see if it does what she wants. The program is then terminated, and the programmer goes back to editing the program further. This cycle is repeated over and over until the program behavior conforms to what the programmer desires. While modern IDEs have optimized this process to be quick and relatively painless, it’s still a slow way to work.

Clojure and CIDER offer a better way to work called interactive programming. Indeed, this idea is at the very heart of CIDER.

Using CIDER’s interactive programming environment, a programmer works in a very dynamic and incremental manner. Instead of repeatedly editing, compiling, and restarting an application, the programmer starts the application once and then adds and updates individual Clojure definitions as the program continues to run. Using the CIDER REPL, the programmer can access the value of different definitions and invoke program functions with test data, immediately seeing the result. This methodology is far more efficient than the typical Edit, Compile, and Run Cycle because the program continues to run and keeps its state intact while the programmer interacts with it. Indeed, some Clojure programmers have been known to keep a CIDER session running for weeks or even months as they continue to write code.

CIDER’s interactive programming environment is partially implemented using an Emacs minor mode called cider-mode. cider-mode complements clojure-mode and allows you to evaluate Clojure code from your source file buffers and send it directly to your running program through the CIDER REPL. Using the functions offered by cider-mode will improve your productivity and make you a more efficient Clojure programmer.