Parent really thinks Smalltalk had the capabilities, realized or not, to do the demos that Bret did in Inventing on Principle. Smalltalk and Lisp have never shown the capability, and in fact just can't do it. Time travel was just never a big thing there.
The Smalltalkers do this all the time; I had even Ralph Johnson poo hoo my 2007 live programming talk. But you get the feeling that these people really think nothing new can be invented after the 80s. They say "Smalltalk" already does this! And you say "show me" and then they just shut up.
All the ideas presented in Christopher Hancock's 2003 dissertation on live programming are compared adequately against previous work. There are plenty of advocates out there for anything that don't do their homework and don't bother with related/previous work sections...only academics like us concern ourselves with that.
