3 ms·

A bit off-topic, but I'm curious what your experience with Smalltalk was professionally. I've always viewed it with rose color glasses. It looks like a wonderf

• stcredzero 10y ago
  There's clearly a set of lower expectations when it comes to tooling. Some of the menu-activated refactorings in VisualStudio 2015 amount to: We'll move text around for you, but you're kind of on your own. Whereas in VisualWorks Smalltalk, all of those came with iron-clad guarantees. I could whip up a custom SQL-query-like query of my loaded code, then have that pop up in a browser. Then I could compose that with another search or another custom query, then maybe even write a syntax-driven automated rewrite of the resulting browser contents. I currently work in C++ using Visual Studio. It's not that I lack certain tools. It's that those tools are themselves lacking. They are slower, less useful, less nimble, and less dependable than what I'm used to. Mostly, they are slower. When refactoring, it's like I'm using a Dremel, a hand-saw, and cheap bench grinder, where I really should have a full shop with a full set of tools, CNC machine, a lathe, and a 3D printer. Refactoring is literally 10X slower, due in large part to the higher cost of entry to hacking on programming tools.