I think what people mean when they say REPL-driven is to have a headless REPL that one never actually interacts with directly, but rather sends it snippets of code for evaluation directly from one's editor. Typing code into a shell prompt is excruciating by comparison.
I think this is a huge barrier of entry to languages like Clojure. The syntax and dynamic nature of the language really lend themselves to an extremely interactive and productive workflow, but that is a hard thing to communicate. It seems most people think that when Clojure programmers refer to the joy of the REPL they imagine writing code into Python or Ruby's REPLs (e.g. https://repl.it/languages/python3), but that is about as far from what is meant as is possible. I mean, who would enjoy programming in an environment that deleted your work every time you finished a line of code?
I think this is a huge barrier of entry to languages like Clojure. The syntax and dynamic nature of the language really lend themselves to an extremely interactive and productive workflow, but that is a hard thing to communicate. It seems most people think that when Clojure programmers refer to the joy of the REPL they imagine writing code into Python or Ruby's REPLs (e.g. https://repl.it/languages/python3), but that is about as far from what is meant as is possible. I mean, who would enjoy programming in an environment that deleted your work every time you finished a line of code?