Re:Syntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel
by rahoulb on Tuesday July 21, 2020 @05:54AM
(#23905620)
Interesting that this has come up on the day when Pharo has also made it to the front page.
Smalltalk uses an image and holds live objects in memory at all times - there's no distinction between the source code representation and the running representation of the code. This allows the "IDE" (which is a misnomer because the development environment and the live environment are one and the same) to introspect on live objects and perform analyses on them.
TL;DR; Smalltalk has never used text as an internal representation and that removes the separation between the source code and the debug or live environment.
Smalltalk uses an image and holds live objects in memory at all times - there's no distinction between the source code representation and the running representation of the code. This allows the "IDE" (which is a misnomer because the development environment and the live environment are one and the same) to introspect on live objects and perform analyses on them.
TL;DR; Smalltalk has never used text as an internal representation and that removes the separation between the source code and the debug or live environment.