Kilon wrote: >Visual Studio can do this with Edit and Continue I know - but still not comparable. Apples and oranges - you know ;)
In VS it works only to a certain extent and has same limits (mostly that in static languages nothing is so late bound as like in dynamic languages): "Edit and Continue handles most types of code changes within method bodies. Most changes outside method bodies, and a few changes within method bodies, cannot be applied during debugging, however." as you can read on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ms164927%28v=vs.100%29.aspx Try to change the debugger in .NET while it is running ;) >So the world definitely starts to catch up with Smalltalk. Which can only >be a good thing. For sure - virtual machines and GC are now common accepted concepts. Java catched up on the tool side with Eclipse as former Smalltalkers laid the ground. (OTI comes to mind). Now even there is a movement to more dynamic environments/languages as JavaScript, Groovy and Dart prove. Unfortunately most of the languages these days are static and still predefined (syntax and facilities) by vendors. Also the runtimes are vendor controlled. And not to forgert: ST concepts like #allInstances would render security concepts like AppDomains in .NET runtime useless, ... Runtimes like .NET or Java catch up these days for better support on dynamic languages (see #dynamicInvoke in JVM). But to run the way you are used to in Smalltalk you need a different base with more control. That's why it is so hard to get Smalltalk with all features and good performance on top of these VMs/runtimes. Contrary the Smalltalk language just sits on top of a dynamic changeable object environment. So if you like you can add new language constucts while running (Traits, Namespaces/Environments, Interfaces, ...) or even new language support (see Helvetica in Pharo). You can change nearly anything (despite the basics in the VM while running). That a SmalltalkVM can run other languages/bytecodes like Java was already demonstrated by VisualAge (IBM) and by Except with Java on top of Smalltalk/X. And just to clarify: Smalltalk has to catch up as well, especially regard better scoping and modularity. That's why Pharo is "Smalltalk inspired". Especially the meta-facilities of Smalltalk are currently not used as they could be used. Especially to do a big part of daily software work nearly automagically ... Bye T.
