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Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

cs.virginia.edu

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Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#41

Post by fusiongyro »

ktRolster wrote: post #31
fusiongyro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm angry because the cult-building around Smalltalk is stupid and I fell for it and wasted years trying to see what was there. - It's stupid because you can use Pharo today; Smalltalk isn't dead. Try it and find out if it's great. They're trying as hard as they can to keep it relevant and it's a constant struggle because they have to build from scratch everything Smalltalk didn't invent. - It's stupid because tiny l…

That sounds......too emotional.

No, it's the right amount of emotional. When people distort the truth, it makes me angry. This is misinformation well beyond the protection of Hanlon's razor. And I resent that you are unable to attack my facts, so you have decided to try to go after my tone instead. If you are in possession of better facts, you should trot them out. But if you're somehow harmed by my honesty or passion then that's your problem.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#42

Post by jacquesm »

hota_mazi wrote: post #16
noblethrasher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the big idea behind Smalltalk, message passing (i.e. programming with computers rather just the programming of computers), keeps getting recapitulated in various forms such as Ruby, Erlang, Docker, etc. Even C#'s LINQ, in its most powerful form, is ultimately a message passing system (and version 4 of the language that introduced `dynamic` went even further). Consider that the first MVC paper conce…

> On the other hand, the big idea behind Smalltalk, message passing (i.e. programming with computers rather just the programming of computers), keeps getting recapitulated in various forms such as Ruby, Erlang, Docker, "Recapitulated"... interesting choice of words. Yes, this approach keeps being rediscovered, becomes a fad for a bit and then gets forgotten again. And for good reason: it leads to spaghetti designs wi…

Message passing has its place, some of the most impressive software projects ever built use it at their core.

That smalltalk does this at the object level is quite possibly not the most useful thing (though it is interesting), but at other levels in an architecture it can be an extremely powerful tool.

You can make spaghetti designs with any architecture, that's nothing to do with message passing per-se.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#43

Post by nielsabel »

fusiongyro wrote: post #38
nielsabel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I was arguing. I was arguing that a better idea does not (necessarily) get adopted, even if it is superior. Sure, Smalltalk might not compete today, but I'd say it was superior /then/ (and still didn't see wide adoption!). That's why I don't have any hope that a superior idea will get adopted in the /future/, whatever it may look like (and this is my main issue here). I'm especially not thrilled about…

I think we've reached agreement here, and I've calmed down a bit so I can restate things a little more dispassionately and maybe demonstrate that. Fundamentally, I think if you're talking about Smalltalk, you're either talking about it in situ , or as it is today, or as an influencer. In the original context, it was thrilling, far ahead of its time in many ways, and lost out because of the reasons you mention: expens…

I think you pretty much nailed it here.

> If you're talking about it as it is today, it's a mixture of great and horrible

Most PC run Wintel and nowadays even more people use/care about ARM/Android/iOS. That's reality and I don't debate that. I'm only/mostly interested in reserarch/CompSci as a discipline.

> But the influence is not as wide as gets claimed by its proponents.

To me, the problem always seemed to be less of how wide these ideas spread but how well they and their origins were understood. OOP made a lot more sense to me, when I found out what Alan Kay had in mind (Sketchpad, Arpanet, biology, etc.).

> Some of the ideas in Smalltalk are synergistic and don't work well taken piecemeal.

Exactly. I think of Smalltalk as more of a system and not just a language. In my opinion, C++, Java, et al. fail (or aren't as good as they could be), because they only take just one idea from Smalltalk (e.g. classes; or the GUI, in case of the Apple Macintosh or Niklaus Wirth's Lilith), when the good things about Smalltalk were due to the interplay of multiple ideas.

> Smalltalk is worth using today, but it has actual faults that shouldn't be whitewashed

I see Smalltalk (and its usefulness) more as a research system than a production system. I'm mostly interested in research and moving Computer "Science" as a discipline forward. I'm sick of people trying to sell me their 5% performance improvement as "new"/"research". Problem is, things haven't fundamentally changed since 1965 (the von Neumann bottleneck is still present, both physically and mentally). Smalltalk could have been the greatest piece garbage in computing history and I'd still respect it (somewhat), because at least it tried to do things fundamentally different.

> I find the cult of Smalltalk distasteful because it prioritizes in-group mythbuilding over the truth.

To be honest, you've got that problem everywhere. Heck, look at Apple, Linux, BSD, Unix/Plan9 …

Btw: I'm currently reading "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its implementation". What's your opinion on that book? And thanks for the other two book recommendations.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#44

Post by AnimalMuppet »

fusiongyro wrote: post #41
ktRolster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds......too emotional.

No, it's the right amount of emotional. When people distort the truth, it makes me angry. This is misinformation well beyond the protection of Hanlon's razor. And I resent that you are unable to attack my facts, so you have decided to try to go after my tone instead. If you are in possession of better facts, you should trot them out. But if you're somehow harmed by my honesty or passion then that's your problem.

> But if you're somehow harmed by my honesty or passion then that's your problem.

You're harmed by your "honesty" and "passion". People don't listen to what you have to say if they are turned off by your tone.

Look, I've been there, too. I've gotten angry about Lisp and Haskell zealots, for much the same reasons you got angry about Smalltalk fans. And my anger was... unproductive at best.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#45

Post by stcredzero »

goatlover wrote: post #14
stcredzero wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were better than Smalltalk, not in terms of the language, but in terms of availability to developers...Smalltalk during the time it could have risen, had no free implementations and cost a fortune to use. There were literally per-seat licenses at $5000 and $10000 at one point. There were free implementations around the time when Java was new, like GNU Smalltalk, but it would have been better if those hadn't exis…

Self was developed at Sun as a prototypal alternative to Smalltalk, which involved a lot of work on the compiler to make it performant. I'm pretty sure that effort fed into the JVM.

I'm pretty sure that effort fed into the JVM.

It did. Much later than the introduction of the JVM, however.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#46

Post by stcredzero »

noblethrasher wrote: post #11
stcredzero wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were some insider events called Camp Smalltalk clustered around the year 2000, where people were saying to each other that we lost the battles, lost the war, but we won our cause. So many of the ideas that went into Smalltalk became mainstream. Java and then C#/DotNet was the validation of that. People continued to say this at other conferences. Consider that IDEs are becoming every more tightly integrated with…

> You should take a look at Smalltalk "IDEs" some time. I've been delightedly toying with Squeak, Pharo, and Dolphin (as well as GNU Smalltalk, which is an anti-example, of course) for some time. I cope with my day job by pretending that SQL Server is a Smalltalk.

We had a nice discussion about this at Camp Smalltalk back in the day. In Smalltalk, everything is an Object, and we even use Objects to define Objects. In a proper relational server, everything is a table, and the tables are themselves defined using tables. SQL database servers are also very dynamic and everything is changeable at runtime, until you start restricting things. Even that last part is parallel to Smalltalk.

There are some things you can do as an advanced VisualWorks developer that look like queries of the codebase. You can search on one predicate like "sender of #message:" and take the intersection of that with another search, and have that pop up as a custom browser.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#47

Post by fusiongyro »

nielsabel wrote: post #43
fusiongyro wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we've reached agreement here, and I've calmed down a bit so I can restate things a little more dispassionately and maybe demonstrate that. Fundamentally, I think if you're talking about Smalltalk, you're either talking about it in situ , or as it is today, or as an influencer. In the original context, it was thrilling, far ahead of its time in many ways, and lost out because of the reasons you mention: expens…

I think you pretty much nailed it here. > If you're talking about it as it is today, it's a mixture of great and horrible Most PC run Wintel and nowadays even more people use/care about ARM/Android/iOS. That's reality and I don't debate that. I'm only/mostly interested in reserarch/CompSci as a discipline. > But the influence is not as wide as gets claimed by its proponents. To me, the problem always seemed to be les…

Nothing else to comment on but this:

> Btw: I'm currently reading "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its implementation". What's your opinion on that book?

It's required reading and it will tell you how to build Smalltalk-the-language (inefficiently, but productively), but it won't really teach you how to use Smalltalk today. For your purposes, it's definitely the right book.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#48

Post by fusiongyro »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #44
fusiongyro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the right amount of emotional. When people distort the truth, it makes me angry. This is misinformation well beyond the protection of Hanlon's razor. And I resent that you are unable to attack my facts, so you have decided to try to go after my tone instead. If you are in possession of better facts, you should trot them out. But if you're somehow harmed by my honesty or passion then that's your problem.

> But if you're somehow harmed by my honesty or passion then that's your problem. You're harmed by your "honesty" and "passion". People don't listen to what you have to say if they are turned off by your tone. Look, I've been there, too. I've gotten angry about Lisp and Haskell zealots, for much the same reasons you got angry about Smalltalk fans. And my anger was... unproductive at best.

Gosh, thanks Mahatma.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#49

Post by nielsabel »

fusiongyro wrote: post #47
nielsabel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you pretty much nailed it here. > If you're talking about it as it is today, it's a mixture of great and horrible Most PC run Wintel and nowadays even more people use/care about ARM/Android/iOS. That's reality and I don't debate that. I'm only/mostly interested in reserarch/CompSci as a discipline. > But the influence is not as wide as gets claimed by its proponents. To me, the problem always seemed to be les…

Nothing else to comment on but this: > Btw: I'm currently reading "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its implementation". What's your opinion on that book? It's required reading and it will tell you how to build Smalltalk-the-language (inefficiently, but productively), but it won't really teach you how to use Smalltalk today. For your purposes, it's definitely the right book.

Thanks. This was a fun discussion.

Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

#50

Post by fusiongyro »

nielsabel wrote: post #49
fusiongyro wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing else to comment on but this: > Btw: I'm currently reading "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its implementation". What's your opinion on that book? It's required reading and it will tell you how to build Smalltalk-the-language (inefficiently, but productively), but it won't really teach you how to use Smalltalk today. For your purposes, it's definitely the right book.

Thanks. This was a fun discussion.

Glad you had fun. I did too.
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