On: Research software code is likely to remain a tangl...

[cratermoon]

Safe automatic refactoring requires the ability to do static analysis of the code. Many refactorings are harder in loosely-typed languages.

[grahamlee → cratermoon]

Refactoring tools were invented in Smalltalk and worked just fine.

[cratermoon → grahamlee]

Smalltalk is dynamically typed, but I wouldn't call it loosely typed. It's closer to Ruby's "duck typing". I was thinking more of Javascript and PHP. Weak and loose.

[disgruntledphd2 → grahamlee]

This has always surprised me, since I learned it.

What are the features of Smalltalk that allowed this to happen? Conversely, what is stopping this from existing in more modern dynamic languages?

[xkriva11 → disgruntledphd2]

Smalltalk has simple and strong reflective features. Moreover, it does not make a difference between the developed program and IDE. This means that doing things like that are very natural and well established in the Smalltalk cultural background.

[grahamlee → xkriva11]

Indeed. Having the whole system in front of you, and knowing how patterns like MVC or Thing-Model-View-Editor encapsulate parts of it, makes it very easy to "reason about" wholesale changes to the system.