I agree with this. I feel like there’s a false dichotomy right now in a lot of these discussions where one can only vibe code or only code by hand. It is possible to do both…
This framing of it being a tool that you find indispensable as an individual is important. I’m not interested in debating static vs dynamic types, or vim vs emacs, etc. If it works for you, then that’s great!
But the difference with LLMs currently - I guess? - is that non-engineers are pushing the idea that it’s universally indispensable at scale. I think it leads to a lot of emotion bleeding into the debate.
You can expose a REPL socket from a running clojure instance in whatever environment you choose. Biff has this as a marketed feature, described on this page: https://biffweb.com/docs/reference/production/
I had my own company previously and I found it hard to detangle that commercial mindset from hobby coding. I’m employed now and find it much easier to code purely for fun.
If I played guitar professionally then I’d probably find it hard to not think about new pieces in the context of a gig-worthy repertoire.