Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

#111

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Aug 28, 2008, 5:51 AM UTC

qwph wrote: post #110

stcredzero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why just read the book? Download Squeak - a bit far from the mainstream expectations, but it's free in the best sense. Or you can get VisualWorks Non-Commercial. (There's a very under-appreciated ASP-like web app framework in VisualWorks!)

I actually found Squeak to be a bit non-intuitive and lurid, but I have played with VisualWorks and Dolphin, to try & get a feel for Smalltalk, but I never really got my head round how things worked. Having a book handy means I have something to turn to the next time I give it a go.

True, Squeak has bad UI color choices. Also, it's a "Burn The Diskpacks" environment. They aren't going to kowtow to any conventions -- they just want to innovate. If you can go with the spirit of that, there's some brilliant stuff in there!

Smalltalk is radically different in a fundamental way when it comes to your relationship to source code and the dev environment. All your source code changes are in something like a transaction log. When you're programming, you're just manipulating the meta-level more or less directly. When you do get it, there's a "whoa!" experience. Better yet, persevere and "get it" then go back to something like iPython. You'll get a real perspective shift!

Re: Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

#112

Post by qwph » Thu, Aug 28, 2008, 7:17 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #111

qwph wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually found Squeak to be a bit non-intuitive and lurid, but I have played with VisualWorks and Dolphin, to try & get a feel for Smalltalk, but I never really got my head round how things worked. Having a book handy means I have something to turn to the next time I give it a go.

True, Squeak has bad UI color choices. Also, it's a "Burn The Diskpacks" environment. They aren't going to kowtow to any conventions -- they just want to innovate. If you can go with the spirit of that, there's some brilliant stuff in there! Smalltalk is radically different in a fundamental way when it comes to your relationship to source code and the dev environment. All your source code changes are in something lik…

Yeah, I actually think I really like Smalltalk-the-Language - it's a really tight set of primitives which interact in a powerful way - it reminds me of Scheme or Forth.

But being born and raised on the commandline, it's Smalltalk-the-Environment which causes me trouble. I often find myself wishing that I could just play with it like you would with, say, Ruby's irb. I find the conventions (having to highlight code and hit Ctrl-I to get it to run, and so on) quite off-putting. If I can get over that, I'm sure it'll be worth it, but it's a bit of a struggle.

Re: Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

#113

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Aug 28, 2008, 1:33 PM UTC

qwph wrote: post #112

stcredzero wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, Squeak has bad UI color choices. Also, it's a "Burn The Diskpacks" environment. They aren't going to kowtow to any conventions -- they just want to innovate. If you can go with the spirit of that, there's some brilliant stuff in there! Smalltalk is radically different in a fundamental way when it comes to your relationship to source code and the dev environment. All your source code changes are in something lik…

Yeah, I actually think I really like Smalltalk-the-Language - it's a really tight set of primitives which interact in a powerful way - it reminds me of Scheme or Forth. But being born and raised on the commandline, it's Smalltalk-the-Environment which causes me trouble. I often find myself wishing that I could just play with it like you would with, say, Ruby's irb. I find the conventions (having to highlight code and…

The Smalltalk Workspace with the debugger, the inspectors and the whole image at your beck and call is irb/iPhython an order of magnitude more powerful!

If you want something like a command line, you can write it fairly easily. You could probably subclass it from the Workspace.

But why would you want to? Most Smalltalks have lots of context-aware goodness! If you are browsing on the class side, highlighting code and executing does it in the context of the class. If you are looking at an instance in the inspector, it does it in the context of that object instance! If you are in the debugger, writing and executing code does it in the context of that stack frame!

Those last two bits of context-awareness have been the environment where I have done some of my best debugging and coding in the past decade!

Command-line or highlight/right-click is only the medium. The message is the thing! Think of it as like adjusting to the controls of a new video game.

Re: Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

#114

Post by parenthesis » Sun, Aug 31, 2008, 11:09 PM UTC

qwph wrote: post #112

stcredzero wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, Squeak has bad UI color choices. Also, it's a "Burn The Diskpacks" environment. They aren't going to kowtow to any conventions -- they just want to innovate. If you can go with the spirit of that, there's some brilliant stuff in there! Smalltalk is radically different in a fundamental way when it comes to your relationship to source code and the dev environment. All your source code changes are in something lik…

Yeah, I actually think I really like Smalltalk-the-Language - it's a really tight set of primitives which interact in a powerful way - it reminds me of Scheme or Forth. But being born and raised on the commandline, it's Smalltalk-the-Environment which causes me trouble. I often find myself wishing that I could just play with it like you would with, say, Ruby's irb. I find the conventions (having to highlight code and…

Try GNU Smalltalk.

http://smalltalk.gnu.org/