I haven’t really seen claims that #Clojure's REPL is new or unique, but this article is interesting nevertheless https://dev.to/dimension-zero/no-clojure-your-repl-is-not-new-or-best-556
Having spent some time with #Erlang, #OCaml and #FSharp I still believe that interactive programming works best with Lisp-like languages. But a powerful REPL is aways handy.
@bbatsov There's a lot in this essay that is at best dubious. It says that
"Smalltalk systems went beyond REPL interaction and embraced image-based development"
#Lisp systems had `sysout` and `sysin` to provide image based development, and I believe that this was the default method of development in #Interlisp before the development of #Smalltalk. Indeed, given that Smalltalk was also developed at Xerox PARC, it's inevitable that there would be cross fertilisation.