On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:49:22 -0700, Fabio Filasieno  
<fabio.filasieno at gmail.com> wrote:

>> ... the *language* part is actually not all that important.
> No it is. And you know it. It's very very important.

But it misses the point. When you talk about most languages, you're JUST  
talking about the language. That's all there is. Yeah, these days you also  
get a VM for a lot of languages but it's a separate beast.

You can't discuss, e.g., changing C's syntax and still be talking about C.  
You can discuss--well, discussions have been had about doing Etoys in  
Python. You could do all of Squeak in Python, probably, or another dynamic  
language (perhaps with some minor adjustments) and a remarkably large  
percentage of the discussion would not change.

I love the Smalltalk syntax and would put it up against any other  
language, but it's more important that you can change it if you don't.