Lessons in Software Evolution Learned by Listening to Smalltalk

Nierstrasz, Oscar; Girba, Tudor (2010). Lessons in Software Evolution Learned by Listening to Smalltalk. In: van Leeuwen, Jan; Muscholl, Anca; Peleg, David; Pokorný, Jaroslav; Rumpe, Bernhard (eds.) SOFSEM 2010. Theory and Practice of Computer Science. 36th Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, Špindleruv Mlýn, Czech Republic, January 23-29, 2010. Proceedings. Lecutre Notes in Computer Science: Vol. 5901 (pp. 77-95). Heidelberg: Springer Verlag 10.1007/978-3-642-11266-9_7

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The biggest challenge facing software developers today is how to gracefully evolve complex software systems in the face of changing requirements. We clearly need software systems to be more dynamic, compositional and model-centric, but instead we continue to build systems that are static, baroque and inflexible. How can we better build change-enabled systems in the future? To answer this question, we propose to look back to one of the most successful systems to support change, namely Smalltalk. We briefly introduce Smalltalk with a few simple examples, and draw some lessons for software evolution. Smalltalk's simplicity, its reflective design, and its highly dynamic nature all go a long way towards enabling change in Smalltalk applications. We then illustrate how these lessons work in practice by reviewing a number of research projects that support software evolution by exploiting Smalltalk's design. We conclude by summarizing open issues and challenges for change-enabled systems of the future.

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