Jesse Welton <jwelton at pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu> wrote:
> Raymond Tiefenthal wrote:
> > 
> > I am a lurker since 98, when I found Squeak. I have an itch to say
> > something, because I  came across Haskell, a functional prog. language and I
> > like it much better than Smalltalk, though Smalltalk is still better than
> > all mainstream languages, in my opinion. What bothers me, is the absence of
> > a nice graphical envrionment where the user, the programmer and all the code
> > live in. I like the idea of a living system, with living objects, where you
> > can change everything on the fly, while it's running.
> 
> Interesting thought.  I wonder, how does one resolve the tension
> between "a living system ... where you can change everything on the
> fly," and a functional language which inherently restricts the
> mutation of objects?
> 

Unless I'm overlooking something, another fundamental problem is the
static typing.  In a Smalltalkish-IDE, you can't assume all the time
that the code type checks.  For starters, it is possible to desire code
changes where you *can't* keep it type checkable in the intermediate
stages.  But even when you can, you may wish to make just some of the
changes and then experiment with what you have before completing it. 
Thus, you either need to come up with a fancy type system that *does*
let you type check in the intermediate stages (this seems impractical to
me!), or you need to think about how to execute code that doesn't type
check.


Lex Spoon