The first question is what it would mean in a Smalltalk environment. His 
tree-drawing example seems to be more of a complete "program" idiom. 
What would be the counterpart in Smalltalk? If you were looking at a 
method and made some changes, when and where would you expect to see the 
changes reflected? If the method were already being run frequently (say 
as a #step method), then you would see the changes in the World. 
Recompile time is negligible, of course, and one could think about using 
sliders to change numeric bits - if you think that improves the 
experience significantly. But what if the method is not being executed 
already, how do you say "I've made a change, now run it?" What's the 
context? And if you think about his tree example, that would likely be a 
number of methods in Smalltalk, so there's not a natural way to look at 
the source all at once.

Of course, what does work a bit like that now is EToys. Also, inspectors 
and explorers can often be used to tweak values of running code, so the 
dichotomy of compile-and-run vs immediate-feedback is one that has 
already been largely bridged.

Cheers,
Bob

On 2/27/12 6:46 PM, Lawson English wrote:
> http://vimeo.com/36579366
>
> Lawson
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20120228/80e58d3b/attachment.htm