On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 09:51 PM, Avi Bryant wrote:

> I believe that the only way Ruby will ever be able to have the same
> level of tool support (of any kind, whether we're talking about code
> browsers, refactoring tools, or version control systems) that
> Smalltalk does is by making the same sacrifice that Smalltalk did: to
> completely avoid any form of code generation or macros.

That's fascinating: you've just clarified for me why I've always found 
it difficult to stick with Smalltalk. I've tried and tried, and yet 
it's always left me feeling flat. The thing for me is that I never 
really found the tradeoff (environment power vs. language power) to 
work too well for me.

So, I'm guessing that this could well be another of those cat 
people/dog people kind of things. Some folks would rather have great 
tools and will sacrifice some language power, while others will 
sacrifice the tools for a language which is more expressive.

This is very interesting. Thanks, Avi.


Dave