From: Peter Suk Date: 2005-04-26T13:47:41+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby on the Smalltalk VM? On Apr 25, 2005, at 5:29 PM, Curt Hibbs wrote: > pat eyler wrote: >> On 4/25/05, Peter Suk wrote: >>> Vincent, >>> >>> A major part of the motivation for this project is to have something >>> like the Refactoring Browser, but Ruby style. >> Are you aware of the Ruby Refactoring Browser? >> http://www.kmc.gr.jp/proj/rrb/index-en.html > > This initial effort was quite laudable, but the project seems to have > been abandoned, and its not particularly useful in its current state. Whereas the Smalltalk Refactoring Browser is extremely powerful, and prompts people like Kent Beck to say that it allows them to refactor an order of magnitude faster which in turn allows an entirely new style of programming which would otherwise be impractical. Current Refactoring tools in Ruby are hampered by obstructed access to the meta-level. (Which is good in Ruby, but not quite up to the level of Smalltalk or Lisp.) Also needed is an easy to use syntax-directed transformation engine -- this is the true heart of the Smalltalk Refactoring Browser. This is one of my original motivations for putting Ruby on top of a Smalltalk-like meta-Ruby layer. For this, you need something like the Smalltalk VM, which has no syntax and very little meta-level semantics built into it. As a result, almost the entire meta-level will be ordinary Ruby objects, as fully extendable by a Ruby programmer in Ruby as an ordinary piece of application code. --Peter -- There's neither heaven nor hell, save what we grant ourselves. There's neither fairness nor justice, save what we grant each other.