Vincent Foley-Bourgon asks about doing remote management of a Smalltalk application:

For instance, you’re at a friend’s home on a Saturday night when you cell rings, it’s work, there’s a pretty big bug in the software and they need it fixed ASAP. With a language that uses text source files, you could use your friend’s computer with Notepad.exe or what have you, make the fix, upload it back and go back to your Bailey’s.

I don't think the whole "works with text files" thing helps a lot. If a system runs into trouble, I seriously doubt that you'll want to try applying a fix by hacking some code in Notepad, and then uploading it. For one thing, how would you compile that for a mainstream application? Bottom line - you need access to your development tools - whatever they are - if you are going to fix a production app. As well, you need access to your test environment.

So, if you get that call Vince speaks of, you're heading back to the office (home or otherwise). Smalltalk images just don't enter into it. I've gone through my scheme for patching this server in place before - it involves coming up with a fix by working with the test server, and then uploading the changes to the server (in the form of a file-in). I then kick the server through a remote admin interface, and tell it to load the code. I also push new versions of the parcels up to the server, so that the next time I start the server, it loads the latest code from the get go.

I suppose I could hack a file-out by hand in notepad, but that's no more realistic than the Java guy doing it. In either case, you simply aren't going to try and apply a production fix that way.