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

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:54:15 +0100, Laura Creighton writes:
>
>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 reloa
>d
>> 
>>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 functi
>o
>>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


I forgot -- getting rid of this was one of the joys of squeak ....