Interactive programming is very developer friendly workflow, something that was already possible at Xerox PARC in their Smalltalk, Interlisp-D and Mesa/CEDAR environments.
Actually there was an early attempt to provide C++ repls back in the early 90's with Lucid Energize C++, after they pivoted from Lisp Machines and applied their knowledge to C++.
Also the majority of CERN code is written in a mix of Fortran and C++, and not all teams like to use Python. So they rather use something that provides interactivity to research their algorithms and speed at the same time.
Wow, that's interesting. Interactive python a la jupyter notebook revolutionized my workflow; I guess it makes sense to allow the same for a codebase written largely in c++
Actually there was an early attempt to provide C++ repls back in the early 90's with Lucid Energize C++, after they pivoted from Lisp Machines and applied their knowledge to C++.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk
Also the majority of CERN code is written in a mix of Fortran and C++, and not all teams like to use Python. So they rather use something that provides interactivity to research their algorithms and speed at the same time.