Building a Tool using the Tool that you're Building ...

I've been watching the Channel 9 video with the Sparkle team, and they just explained a concept that is making my brain hurt a bit.

Sparkle is a new tool (similar to Flash, to a degree) that allows you to create UI and applications in XAML, using the Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon). While showing off some of the features of Sparkle, they explained that Sparkle was actually created with Sparkle.

What the hey now?

Apparently, as the project progressed, they were able to use newer build of Sparkle to modify the codebase ... literally opening the application inside of itself.

I've been avoiding getting too deep into programming (besides web apps and light scripting) because I'm not sure that there will be many jobs in the US, but I think it could be fun to dabble with. Microsoft is releasing a package of applications called Expression (of which Sparkle, Quartz, which is essentially a re-branded FrontPage, and Acrylic, which is the Photoshop/Illustrator-type application, are a part), and it sounds like Expression could be an interesting way to get up and running creating little apps. I've frequently thought that it might be fun to create widgets and stuff like that to accomplish small tasks. Sounds to me like Microsoft is trying to create tools to do just that.