TITLE: Programming Languages Quote of the Day
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: November 18, 2012  9:13 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
... comes from
<A HREF="http://gbracha.blogspot.com/2012/11/debug-mode-is-only-mode.html">
   Gilad Bracha</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
I firmly believe that a time traveling debugger is worth more than
a boatload of language features[.]
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

This passage comes as part of a discussion of what it would take
to make
<A HREF="http://worrydream.com/">
   Bret Victor</A>'s
vision of programming a reality.  Victor demonstrates powerful ideas
using "hand crafted illustrations of how such a tool might behave".
Bracha, whose work on Smalltalk and
<A HREF="http://bracha.org/Site/Newspeak.html">
   Newspeak</A>
have long inspired me -- reflects on what it would take to offer
Victor's powerful ideas in a general purpose programming environment.

Smalltalk as a language and environment works at a level where we
conceive of providing the support Victor and Bracha envision, but
most of the language tools people use today are too far removed
from the dynamic behavior of the programs being written.  The
debugger is the most notable example.

Bracha suggests that we free the debugger from the constraints of
time and make it a tool for guiding the evolution of the program.
He acknowledges that he is not the first person to propose such an
idea, pointing specifically to Bill Lewis's proposal for
<A HREF="http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/">
   an omniscient debugger</A>.
What remains is the hard work needed to take the idea farther and
provide programmers more transparent support for understanding
dynamic behavior while still writing the code.
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