[TimJYoung]

Thanks again for the detailed reply.

I will definitely try Pharo and see how it all works. I've read a bit here and there about Smalltalk over the years, and the whole environment seems really cool. I'm especially interested in the whole "not requiring static types", because that may give some ideas on how to do a JS IDE without losing the functionality that we wish to maintain. The "liveness" of the Smalltalk environment is also very much in line with how JS/HTML are used, so there may be a natural fit there.

[vram22]

I just read scroot's comment (the grandparent comment to mine, and parent to yours). I found it somewhat uncannily similar to a sub-thread involving HN user mikelevins (a long-time Lisp developer) in another HN thread a while ago (about Lisp). He commented on something (it was a thread about a Show HN about Full Stack Lisp, a book), I asked a question, he replied in more depth. His description of some advanced features of Lisp was fairly similar to what scroot wrote above (but with more points added). So you might be interested to check it out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11834887

That is the top comment by him in that sub-thread. My question to him is 2nd reply below, then he replied at even greater length. Some pretty deep stuff..

(In another of his comments - this one, in a different thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14677396 - he also mentioned that Lisp and Smalltalk are two of only a few languages that share some of the features he talks about.)

[scroot]

I also should mention that I only started getting into the Smalltalk stuff a year ago, and am by no means an expert. But reading about it and using it (Pharo mostly) really changed the way I think not only about programming, but computing more generally. If you ever watch a Kay lecture you won't really get what he's saying until you've used one of these live environments, whether it's Smalltalk or an interactive Lisp.

I recommend getting the Adele Goldberg "Smalltalk: The Language and its Implementation" (colloquially known as the "Blue Book"). I find it to be the second best programming book ever, aside from The Little Schemer.

[vram22]

Thanks, will try to check out that book at some point, and Pharo too.

[TimJYoung]

Thanks, I'll check those out. For a sub-thread that involved my original post getting down-voted, this is turning out to be very informative. ;-)

[vram22]

Ha, good one, and welcome.