>In your world, that may be the case- but some would like to have a better
>understanding of the reliability of the tools that they use.   I happen
>to think that overall Smalltalk ( and of course Squeak ) usually is pretty
>good- but I don't have the ability to say that I KNOW that.  Squeak in
>particular is tough to consider as a strong system simply due to the
>high rate of change it is going through right now.

This is a strange remark. The nonfalsifiable proposition that Squeak 
is bad unless certified good is either vacuous, or trivially true of 
all software.  Squeak is not going through a "high rate of change" 
significantly different from any other large software project, 
including Python, GCC and Sendmail.  There is no obligation to, and 
indeed it is not suggested that someone who needs stability attempt 
to, use anything other than the present stable system.  Users of 
alpha and beta systems will experience great change.

If you require stability, use a stable system.  Squeak never updates 
itself unless you ask it to do so.

*extensive criticism of Squeak as development tool because of highly 
coupled systems*

>So, to summarize- the situation as I see it is that there actually is a need
>for tools that would support "A Different Way of Doing Smalltalk Development".

Have you considered that it would be just as difficult to rebuild 
from scratch and without documentation 'highly coupled' subsystems as 
to decouple them?
-- 
Andrew C. Greenberg		acg at netwolves.com
V.P. Eng., R&D, 		813.885.2779 (office)
Netwolves Corporation		813.885.2380 (facsimile)
www.netwolves.com

Please use werdna at mucow.com instead of werdna at gate.net