On Friday 08 Aug 2008 10:55:11 pm Craig Latta wrote:
>  > what is so mysterious ;-) in a image that can't be captured in an
>  > imperative environment?
>
>       Nothing. (And I think you meant "declarative".)
>
>       We're haggling over a matter of motivation at this point
I can understand why someone may not wish to go so far into the past that they 
cross the point of singularity (when the first image came into existence). 
But the knowledge about how to create the primordial soup should not be lost 
into oblivion. SystemTracer can be a source but should not be the only 
source.

Smalltalk is compact (and powerful) because of consistent and repeated 
applications of few powerful patterns; just like Nature. My interest got 
piqued because if the primal image is so complex that it requires jiggery 
pokery perhaps it is time to apply Occam's razor to it. Transmutation (aka 
bootstrapping) from one type of system into Smalltalk should not be so 
complex that SystemTracer remains only source of information even after nine 
years. A google count of 492 after nine years of SystemTracer is 
disconcerting. What patters have we missed out here?

BTW, I meant imperative *environments* (OS platforms like Linux, Unix or 
Windows). The image itself can be declarative.

Subbu