[Pharo-dev] Immutability in the VM - is it hard?

Hello, Why is the concept of “immutability” special to VisualWorks? Is it something hard to add to other Smalltalk dialects such as Pharo or are there other reasons for not having it? When I read the docs for the GOODS database client it says the following: “The GOODS client uses this immutability support for change detection.” It goes on to say that this is only for VisualWorks. For Pharo it says that it is generally slow to commit changes because the client to the OODB has to spent extra time detecting change detection. I guess for VisualWorks it is basically “free” to detect a change in an object. Thank you, AARON ROSENZWEIG / Chat 'n Bike e: aaron@chatnbike.com t: (301) 956-2319