On Apr 8, 2004, at 8:10 PM, Dan Ingalls wrote:

> Hi, A and Bert -
>
>>> That said, I'm a bit indifferent about including hard-core hacking
>>> stuff like VMMaker or Refactoring browser. I personally would include
>>> VMMaker but not RB, but I couldn't explain where to draw the line.
>>
>> VMMaker would be *extremely* powerful and deep if someone would just 
>> write a
>> little UI wrapper for the simulator so that you can run the simulator 
>> just
>> from the world's open menu. That'd be an "aha-effect" that people 
>> wouldn't
>> forget so fast... and besides it may actually lead to the simulator 
>> keeping
>> in sync with the other changes if it could be more easily executed 
>> and be
>> run casually.
>
> I agree, although it's kind of big now.  But it sure turns people's 
> heads around -- especially if you make a change.  Also, its presence 
> makes real on our claim of "you get it all" since, in that form, it 
> does carry the interpreter itself, with full source in the single 
> Squeak package.  It'sa perception thing, but isn't that part of what 
> "full" means?

As someone who's always intended to play around with VM hacking at some 
point, but has never gotten around to it (there's plenty to do in the 
image ;-) ), I agree that this would be *very* cool!

Maybe even have a Play With Me project which steps one through changing 
a slang method to do something interesting, and then running the 
simulator to show the results.  (Not sure we'd actually need or want to 
run Morphic itself on top of the simulator... I'd think that would be 
rather slow?)

- Doug