From your description it sounds like in-memory application state is lost with Hot Reload, but I don't think that's true? I admit might be wrong about this, it doesn't apply to Unity which is my main development environment.
Quoting from the docs (emphasis mine):
> .NET Hot Reload applies code changes, including changes to stylesheets, to a running app without restarting the app and *without losing app state*
That sounds more like how you described edit-and-continue to me.
Quoting from the docs (emphasis mine): > .NET Hot Reload applies code changes, including changes to stylesheets, to a running app without restarting the app and *without losing app state*
That sounds more like how you described edit-and-continue to me.