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Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

simberon.blogspot.nl

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Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#51

Post by cabalamat »

gamache wrote: post #19

Articles about how great Smalltalk is usually remind me of articles about how great the Lisp Machine was. And there is a lot of merit to an entire system, hardware and software, designed to operate in a high-level language. My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Perhaps the biggest shift in software engineering in the last decade or two is the fact that no one writes entire sys…

> My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way.

Isn't Light Table essentially an effort to re-create the Smalltalk environment for modern languages?

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#52

Post by fractallyte »

nsxwolf wrote: post #48
nsxwolf wrote: post #45

So, it's a language for doped up hippies. That's what I got out of that. I recalled Jerry Garcia's stories about scuba diving and how it was better than LSD. I have no clue what it means to live amongst your objects and touch and feel and turn and taste them. That article didn't really explain what that means, but I'll take him at his word.

Sure, downvote me. This article says nothing. You have to be a Smalltalk lifer to get it. It's all metaphors that have no meaning to anyone outside the author's bubble. Crap article.

Apologies for throwing these quotes in, but they just seem so appropriate in this context:

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."

"After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

Try the red pill... (And think of turtles rather than rabbits!)

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#53

Post by e12e »

gamache wrote: post #19

Articles about how great Smalltalk is usually remind me of articles about how great the Lisp Machine was. And there is a lot of merit to an entire system, hardware and software, designed to operate in a high-level language. My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Perhaps the biggest shift in software engineering in the last decade or two is the fact that no one writes entire sys…

> My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way.

I think one could make the case that Android shares many design decisions with a "Smalltalk machine". And the same actually goes for iOS, as objective-c is basically Smalltalk bolted on to c.

And then there is javascript that's modelled after Self -- so by extention chrome OS is also similar to a "Smalltalk machine".

Now why all these systems end up with some bastardized crappy programming languages rather than just using Smalltalk -- that I don't know.

The exception might be the one-laptop-per-child project.

So, I think it's wrong to say "it's not coming back" -- even java (for set-top boxes and smart devices) was an attempt at "bringing it back".

If anything, it seems these systems keep being reinvented.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#54

Post by rimantas »

rbanffy wrote: post #40
gamache wrote: post #19

Articles about how great Smalltalk is usually remind me of articles about how great the Lisp Machine was. And there is a lot of merit to an entire system, hardware and software, designed to operate in a high-level language. My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Perhaps the biggest shift in software engineering in the last decade or two is the fact that no one writes entire sys…

There is great danger in learning OOP with Smalltalk. Everything fits together so elegantly, the first time I opened a book about C++, I closed it in disgust (after seeing the bit-shift operator being used for console output, wtf?!), only to give the language a second chance 8 years later. I even learned Java before giving C++ a try. When a young programmer asks me for advice about the next language to learn is, my a…

  > I even learned Java before giving C++ a try
I must admin from all the stuff I saw on the internet I am now scared even try to learn C++. I think it is the looks as a least desireable language to learn for me. Which sucks a bit because there is position at a company I wouldn't mind work for.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#55

Post by aaronem »

cabalamat wrote: post #51
gamache wrote: post #19

Articles about how great Smalltalk is usually remind me of articles about how great the Lisp Machine was. And there is a lot of merit to an entire system, hardware and software, designed to operate in a high-level language. My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Perhaps the biggest shift in software engineering in the last decade or two is the fact that no one writes entire sys…

> My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Isn't Light Table essentially an effort to re-create the Smalltalk environment for modern languages?

From its documentation, it looks more like an attempt to expose the kind of REPL/runtime integration Emacs offers, through an interface which won't scare people off the way Emacs tends to do.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#56

Post by nnq »

rimantas wrote: post #54
rbanffy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is great danger in learning OOP with Smalltalk. Everything fits together so elegantly, the first time I opened a book about C++, I closed it in disgust (after seeing the bit-shift operator being used for console output, wtf?!), only to give the language a second chance 8 years later. I even learned Java before giving C++ a try. When a young programmer asks me for advice about the next language to learn is, my a…

> I even learned Java before giving C++ a try I must admin from all the stuff I saw on the internet I am now scared even try to learn C++. I think it is the looks as a least desireable language to learn for me. Which sucks a bit because there is position at a company I wouldn't mind work for.

Learn C first! You'll understand why C++ is what it is and you'll also get the skills needed to contribute in a lot of open-source projects.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#57

Post by bromagosa »

gamache wrote: post #19

Articles about how great Smalltalk is usually remind me of articles about how great the Lisp Machine was. And there is a lot of merit to an entire system, hardware and software, designed to operate in a high-level language. My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Perhaps the biggest shift in software engineering in the last decade or two is the fact that no one writes entire sys…

I've worked with Smalltalk for four years now, and for what you write, I guess you haven't been keeping up with our progresses. Take a look at:

http://amber-lang.net

http://www.redline.st/

http://pharo-project.org

Saying Smalltalk hasn't kept up with computing progress is an old argument that doesn't make sense anymore.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#58

Post by bromagosa »

cabalamat wrote: post #51
gamache wrote: post #19

Articles about how great Smalltalk is usually remind me of articles about how great the Lisp Machine was. And there is a lot of merit to an entire system, hardware and software, designed to operate in a high-level language. My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Perhaps the biggest shift in software engineering in the last decade or two is the fact that no one writes entire sys…

> My complaint is that neither of these things is coming back in a relevant way. Isn't Light Table essentially an effort to re-create the Smalltalk environment for modern languages?

Yes. And seriously, when I saw the first Light Table demo and everyone was so amazed with it I thought "man, that's how we code every day in Smalltalk... what's so new about it?"

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#59

Post by bromagosa »

fractallyte wrote: post #50
ddfreyne wrote: post #12

The analogy given in the article is pretty accurate. The Smalltalk environment is unique in that it allows very easy access to the libraries, the IDE and the language’s internals (including the compiler!). The Smalltalk debuggers are among the best ones I have ever used. (I’m mostly speaking out of my experience with VisualWorks, a commercial Smalltalk implementation, but other implementations are similar.) I would g…

> many parts of the Smalltalk IDEs are horribly outdated My opinion is the opposite: I find the IDE in Pharo to be simple and very elegant, far more human-friendly than any I've seen in 'mainstream' languages. And this version of Smalltalk is under heavy development, with a push towards even greater cohesion. This small corner of computing is seething with hot, cutting-edge activity. > The text editors are pretty bad…

> Well, you ought to know that Smalltalk is focused on relatively small snippets of code, held together in consistent OO structures. There's hardly any point in fancy text-editing features when your methods are generally 8-12 lines long!

This! And also, in Pharo 3.0 there's being a huge push towards better text editing, although I've never ever needed more than what Pharo 1.0 did already provide...

You don't work with text in Smalltalk.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#60

Post by bromagosa »

fusiongyro wrote: post #44
gabordemooij wrote: post #15

I have been facinated by Smalltalk but the language drives my kinda crazy. I have read the 'Blue book' ( http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/64 ) and tried Pharo ( http://www.pharo-project.org/home ), Amber ( http://amber-lang.net/ ) and GNU Smalltalk. While I really like Smalltalk, for some reason it does not work for me as a web development platform (and the web is my platform), or maybe I just don't grasp it. I tried Se…

There are two other web frameworks in use, and I think one of them is more about generating clean URLs. Illiad? I love the idea of Smalltalk, but it also never stuck for me. I think I just prefer to learn from books than through milling around in the image. All the great minds in Smalltalk seem to be self-driven autodidacts. I'm not. I'm pretty good at Haskell and Prolog though, so I think it works out in the end. I'…

Yep. AidaWeb and Iliad (plus many other smaller ones).

Although Iliad is not about generating clean URLs (it can, though), but more about being small and understandable, plus having Ajax for free and being pragmatic.

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