The complexity snake eats its tail

I work with smallTalk ( everyone turn your head and spit ) and
recently I've been looking at ways of making one of our formula
processors more efficient. This processor, written in smallTalk,
parses and executes equations one line at a time and often, is forced
to reprocess the same equation set many times from scratch. One
simple speed enhancement would be to reduce a given set of equations
into quads that would contain variable references so they didn't have
to be looked up repeatedly.


    It seems ridiculous to write an intermediate code interpreter in a
high level language like smallTalk... but many times you are confined
to one language. I would like to hear any other stories about
"swatting a fly with the Aegis defense system" ( having to implement
low-level functionality in a high level language ).
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