&gt; Yes, but very few of those are automated. Which is not surprising since the absence of types in Smalltalk can lead to refactorings that break your code, so user supervision is necessary.<p>This is just not true. Go download a copy of VisualWorks. Try a Squeak image with OmniBrowser installed. They both have IDEs with <i>automated</i> refactorings. I have used both. I have contributed to the OmniBrowser implementation.<p>What you say does apply to Ruby or Python. It does not apply to Smalltalk.