The objects are "alive", even the ones in the debug stack. You can "talk" to them and get their state, ask them to evaluate an alternate flow etc, for any line

The objects are "alive", even the ones in the debug stack. You can "talk" to them and get their state, ask them to evaluate an alternate flow etc, for any line in the stack. In fact, the stack itself is just a normal property of the system that shows up when the system encounters something it does not understand, and asks you to provide an answer. Smalltalk is absolutely weird.