[Edu-sig] Reloading code (was Re: OLPC: first thoughts)

[Laura Creighton]

Speakingf as swho has maintained a smalltalk interpreter ...

In a message of Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:25:01 EST, "Paul D. Fernhout" writes:
<skip damn near all of it>

><guido>
>> Why do you care about avoidung VM changes? The VM changes
>> (incrementally) at each minor Python release.
>
>Just so everyone (especially *me* :-) can use start using it right now, 
>including in older versions of Python (like 2.4 etc.).
>
>Of course, I would have to break that bad habit I've gotten into of 
>restarting the program every time I make a change -- and it's hard to 
>break that habit, even when I use a supplemental tool that lets me reload
> 
>Jython modules selectively -- I keep thinking -- I did not have to 
>restart. :-)
>
>Still, even with all this, if you are making a GUI and modify the functio
>n 
>that defines the window, you generally still need to close and open the 
>window again. So there remain limits (unless you move to GUIs defined 
>interactively like Morphic or PataPata). Just talking about getting most 
>of the benefit.
>

Ah, because its we have tons of legacy Smalltalk code that was
really well and truly built with the idea that the VM would never
change and we could play tricks on its bytecode forever.  Lots of
us did strage and wonderfukl things and now no change to the 
byte code, no matter how reasonable on the surface, will break
many things.  Stuff that just got stored that weay bwecause, 
'why not' and now is stuck in the space that is between
'officially sanctioned' and 'used commonly' for various
vaÃlues of common.

Its enough tomake smalltalk hackers want to make changes in the
language as never is to change the bytecode.  Because everbody
as matters is making their own hacks with live-but-modified bytecode.

Laura