R is for REPL - Python A to Z

Python A-Z is a blog series about Python. Each day, I share insights, ideas and examples for different parts of Python development that match with the letter of the day. Blaugust is an annual blogging festival in August where the goal is to write a blog post every day of the month. Completely by accident, I ended up with a four day streak of acronym titles. ORM, PEP, Q and today REPL. We developers sure love acronyms. REPL (read-eval-print loop) is one of those things that make programming languages more approachable to me. I love being able to build my code bit-by-bit and have an easy way to test ideas out or double check on syntax without having to build all the infrastructure around them to run. If you start Python without any arguments, you end up in a REPL: $ python Python 3.14.6 (main, Jun 23 2026, 15:46:31) [Clang 22.1.3 ] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> The >>> tells you it is accepting your input and whatever you type there…