Here's a nice post explaining one of the ways that Smalltalk's live object model helps you out in ways you might not think of: ad-hoc testing - just grab the models directly. This is from a post that goes into testing a new part of a web app:

So I have two choices: (1) I can create the whole GUI that lets one enter data or (2) I can put some extra code in my program to populate the data, for testing.

The problem with 2 is not big, just that I'm wasting time writing stuff I will have to take out later, just so I can test. Choice 1 doesn't have that problem, but it does break my focus. I have to stop working on what I am really interested in: the display pages, to work on a data input page(s).

But Smalltalk has another option (my favorite in fact): I can simply navigate through the live web site objects (via 'find instance of') until I find pages and insert the model data directly.

There are so many little ways like this that Smalltalk just saves you time and trouble.

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