I would love to see an editor, which works on the AST directly - aka
it maps the source code to AST nodes, and just updates the smallest
possible subtree at each keystroke. Implementing such editor has it's
challenges ofc, like typing a single character can invalidate the
whole code, but the editor should keep the AST somehow in that case too.
Me too and I want pretty print as you type :)
A student will probably want to start that adventure so we will have fun.
Another way to see it: How would the original Smalltalk be designed
if they would have had 4GB RAM in 1978?
What fascinates me still is that Smalltalk used the existing
resources (even building their own machines) to an
extreme, while today we are obsessed to find reasons why we can not
do anything that makes the system
slower or use more memory than yesterday. And that even with
resources growing every year…
This is why we e.g. now have a meta object describing every instance
variable in Pharo. I am sure there are people
who will see these ~7000 objects as pure waste… while I would say
that we have already *now* the resources to be
even more radical.
I think this is a different thing. Improvements are always welcome, as
long as they don't step on your toes.
About Slots: I don't see their advantages yet (other than bitfields,
but those are so rare in Smalltalk that I implement them causes no
trouble. And they are just an optimization over using multiple fields.).
Levente
Marcus
