From: Albert Wagner <alwagner@...>
Date: 2003-08-15T22:20:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Refactoring Browsers (was: [ann] AEditor 0.10, folding added)

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:15:43 +0900
Dave Thomas <Dave@PragProg.com> wrote:

> 
> 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.

I don't think that this is normally a conscious choice.  Having come
from 10+ years of Smalltalk, I find that things like dynamic generation
of code never even enter my mind when searching for a solution to a
problem.  Personally, I fail to even see a need for such a thing.  It
simply ties my mind in knots.  I would be perfectly content if such
features did not exist. I wouldn't argue for their removal, but am
rather expressing the idea that my mind simply doesn't work that way. 
Are there really problems that cannot be solved without dynamic code
generation?