Symbol >> asSortBlock
“Answer a sort block, which evaluates this symbol for both arguments
and compares the resulting values”
| stream |
stream := (String new: self size * 2 + 14) writeStream.
stream
nextPutAll: ‘[:a :b|a ';
nextPutAll: self;
nextPutAll: '<=b ';
nextPutAll: self;
nextPut: $].
^Compiler evaluate: stream contents

Also – excellent post on currying. I’m always blown away how Smalltalk (and some other dynamic languages, to be fair) can be made to do things they were never designed to do with minimal effort.

I believe it achieves this by supporting incremental compilations, and a development model that involves (without explicit developer interaction) “melting” code to render it to a dynamic state, and “freezing” code when its settled to achieve full optimisation. In a way, I see this as the other extreme of hot-spotting code – all code is optimised, but as its being worked on it can be rendered to a mode that facilitates hot-patching.

Lovely to see the progress made. It is robust, does things that you simply don’t see elsewhere: Moving a window dynamically from one GUI manager (Squeak’s) to another Windows’ native. Real reuse: free history. Non-modality.

Wonderful stuff Vassili!