"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy." Patrick Logan's weblog.

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Saturday, October 07, 2006

All My Languages Use an Image File

Blaine points out a fantastic feature Smalltalk has had (yes, since the 1970s), that more language systems should emulate.

My favorite part of the night though was the reaction I got when I shut down the image, restarted it, and was at the exact point that I left it instantly. The power of image-based development compels thee!
But the thing is *all* my languages are now image based. Ever since I started using VMWare, my entire machine's state is saved and restored, rolled forward with snapshots, linked and branched, etc.

It's not all the way there as with Smalltalk, e.g. no browsing and selecting from "change sets", etc. But it is pretty useful.

I bet other people using virtual machines like VMWare had no idea their languages were "image based"! What a weird thing. Who'd want that? 8^)

1 comment:

EY said...

On top of that, there are ways to do checkpointing for individual applications e.g. checkpointing.org without any changes to the code.

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Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.