The Smalltalk Rewrite Engine: A Powerful but Difficult-to-Use Tool for AST-Level Code Transformation
By
mpweiher
A five-star bake. Worth schmearing, sharing, saving.
Summary
The article discusses the Smalltalk rewrite engine, a powerful AST-level matching and rewriting tool introduced by John Brant and Don Roberts in 1997. The author acknowledges its brilliance but notes that its syntax is difficult to remember and use, even for experienced developers. The piece explores the challenges of working with the rewrite engine's complex syntax and suggests that while the tool is powerful, its usability suffers from poor documentation and memorability issues.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledThe rewrite engine is an absolutely brilliant invention by John Brant and Don Roberts, introduced with the Refactoring Browser
It gives us AST-level matching and rewriting with astonishing power
But let's be honest: how many people actually remember its syntax?
Even the simplest rewrite rule—say, replacing a deprecated message with a new one—usually sends me hunting for examples
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