Prototyping languages related constructs and tools with Squeak

Prototyping new programming languages is often assimilated as a task requiring heavy expertise in parsing and compilation. This paper argues that choosing as a host platform a language having advanced reflective capabilities helps in reducing the effort and time spent on developing new language related constructs and tools. The Squeak Smalltalk implementation provides very expressive reflective facilities. In this paper we focus on having methods as first class entities, enabling methods manipulation as plain standard objects and reification of method execution. Powerful language related tools and efficient new programming constructs can be quickly implemented. ByteSurgeon, a bytecode manipulation library, and FacetS, an aspect mechanism, serve as illustrations.