So you have Squeak, which is Smalltalk in Smaltalk, you have AOStA, you have PyPy, which is Python in Python, and you have any of a number of Lisps in Lisp. I'd guess that there's a Ruby in Ruby in the works out there somewhere. This is an interesting trend.

1. The presence of state makes debugging a pain. This arguest for a more functional approach to programing wherever possible.
2. Something like a timewarp or replay debugger that captured the state of the program at every state transition could help with these problems. In languages that reify activation records (as closures or continuations), this should not be that difficult to do, albeit hugely expensive in memory.

Elliotte Rusty Harold's request for conditional breakpoints based on the contents of the call stack:

I'd like to be able to set a breakpoint that's conditional on another method being executed. For example, I'd like to stop in the startMakingElement method, but only when the testZ method has been called. I don't want to stop in startMakingElement for testA through testY

Seems like debugger folks have a lot of work to do. At least until James Robertson posts and tells us that all of this can be done in VisualWorks ;-). In the meantime, the IntelliJ and Eclipse folks should get busy.

I think that Martin Roell's post on this is right as far as the usefulness of blogs, but wrong about a "Blog-Headhunting Agency". Once people figure this out, everyone will do it. The biggest problem is probably that there aren't enough people out in the blogosphere yet.