The original Smalltalk refactoring engine didn't take off until it was packaged as the Refactoring Browser. But the real utility in it was making arbitrary scri

The original Smalltalk refactoring engine didn't take off until it was packaged as the Refactoring Browser. But the real utility in it was making arbitrary scripting of meta-level and syntax driven code transformation very accessible. You can literally be an order of magnitude more powerful with refactorings with a tool like that. Python is a good language for for this sort of tool. There is a lot of potential for the power of Python harnessed to rewrite Python.