I'd say that Java's verbosity doesn't lend itself well to interactive use. There are quite a few REPLs that allow calling Java code from another language, e.g. the integrated Javascript interpreters (run `jjs` in a terminal), BeanShell, Jython, JRuby, etc.

Don't forget Groovy! It's expressly built to bring "dynamic feeling" to Java.

And don't forget that Java can call Groovy code ;-)

The lack of interest. If you haven't used a language that has a REPL you don't know how powerful it is. Most of the Java devs I know haven't used REPL with any other language.

Beanshell was there since 1999

Yes, finally someone remembered it!

Reinventing the wheel is so human...

I know right? But if you say groovy and the like are just respin of age old stuff they treat you like an old fart

And to think that when I advocated for writing business logic in a scripted language in 2003 everyone was looking at me like I was crazy (well italy is always quite behind last trends, so while in the states they were starting with scripting languages we were still writing ejb with xml - and we still do in many places)

In fact, JavaREPL (http://www.javarepl.com/) with its standalone version exists for very long time.

Several months ago I wanted to have an REPL for C and couldn't find anything satisfactory and I had the similar thought: Why weren't there any decent REPL for C ?

Have you looked at these?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9641832

https://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/cling

http://blog.pclewis.com/2010/03/tip-using-gdb-as-an-interact...

All Java IDE's have offered an interactive shell for years so there is little need for a REPL. It's just a nice thing to have but nothing more.

This is nothing new. When I was at uni (10+ years ago), we used DrJava, which includes a Java REPL.