You are correct, Smalltalk as-is can't currently do that. I believe he was referring to a future language / evolution / system that he would like to see, not s

You are correct, Smalltalk as-is can't currently do that. I believe he was referring to a future language / evolution / system that he would like to see, not something that currently exists. These are the sorts of things I think he's expressing his frustration about when he says things like Smalltalk getting long in the tooth etc. in that it was never intended to the be-all, end-all of languages... just one stop along a path. But don't let this discourage you from looking into Squeak. I played around with Squeak in the 90's but couldn't see past things like the weird mouse button mappings and color scheme. Fortunately I came back to it again and found some of the glaring UI issues (by modern standards) had been smoothed over. It also probably didn't hurt that I was a little older and better able to stick with it until I could finally see better the second go at it what the original vision was. Also, there is the work from his STEPS project which used Squeak as a platform that was used to prototype some of the next-generation ideas he talks about. If you want to understand better the next generation concepts, definitely look at the VPRI writings (esp. the STEPS annual reports) linked to in a previous post. To bridge the gap from here to there (i.e. to get to a tangible system that you can actually use that does any of this) I think you're probably going to want to learn Smalltalk as a starting point.