Smalltalk and exploratory programming

Using Smalltalk-80, programmers can produce prototypes much faster than with C or Pascal. What techniques do Smalltalk-80 programmers use to produce these prototypes? What is special about Smalltalk-80 that enables them to uses these techniques? Can these techniques be used with conventional languages such as C? In an attempt to answer these questions we interviewed experienced Smalltalk programmers and asked how they approach programming in Smalltalk. Such introspective interviews that are conducted after completion of a project are known to be somewhat unreliable, but not enough is known to use any other methodology. What follows is a summary of the interviews, followed by an explanation of the results. Finally we discuss some of the weaknesses of Smalltalk and some possible solutions.