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Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

simberon.blogspot.nl

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Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#81

Post by shurcooL »

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…

I problem I ran into when giving it a try. I couldn't easily find a way to print to standard output. All I wanted was to print some strings, numbers and manipulate them. Instead, it was easier to have a red ball on the screen.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#82

Post by e12e »

Ygg2 wrote: post #62
e12e wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sy…

> Now why all these systems end up with some bastardized crappy programming languages rather than just using Smalltalk -- that I don't know. Because Worse is Better[1]. For example Internet and the Web is a bastardized version of Xanadu Project[2]. HTML is a bastardized version of XML or XHTML. Worse is here now, when Better gets here, it's not Better anymore, only marginally more useful. That or it turns out the ben…

> HTML is a bastardized version of XML or XHTML.

No, HTML was an SGML language (XHTML is of course an XML language). HTML5 is more of an "HTML"-like language...

SGML, if anything, is more powerful than XML -- but XML is a great effort to simplify SGML while maintaining most of the power.

For other SGML languages than HTML, look for docbook (which now also exist in an XML dress).

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#83

Post by _mhr_ »

fractallyte wrote: post #52
nsxwolf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."…

Sorry, this is completely unrelated, but I've been trying to email you, and it keeps bouncing. What's happened?

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#84

Post by klibertp »

shurcooL wrote: post #81
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…

I problem I ran into when giving it a try. I couldn't easily find a way to print to standard output. All I wanted was to print some strings, numbers and manipulate them. Instead, it was easier to have a red ball on the screen.

There is no stdout, but if you want, you can print to something. Just open up a Transcript window and use 'Transcript show: ' method.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#85

Post by maliki »

One benefit that a lot of commenters here have pointed out is very user-friendly inspection of running code. Kind of a super-REPL. I find that in Python I'm most productive in iPython's browser-based notebook interface (or Mathematica, but I find Mathematica difficult for writing things that go into web-facing applications), which offers similar features.

These notebook interfaces are REPLs, but they're a little more user friendly in the sense that you can edit history in place instead of doing a history completion and then evaluating an additional line.

Has anybody had any experience with these notebook interfaces as well as the smalltalk environment and can give a rundown of the differences?

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#86

Post by swift »

pjmlp wrote: post #77
rbanffy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you like to elaborate on that?

There are lots of C constructs that are considered bad practice in C++ - null terminated strings - plain vectors - manual management of resources (memory, files, db connections, locks...) - C style casts - pre-processor instead of using inline/const/templates - the C subset of C++ it is also not 100% compatible with C, there are a few cases with different semantics - since C99, new language constructs are added via m…

I have to take issue with your inclusion of "Modern C++ Design" in a reading list about learning C++. If you're new to C++, that is exactly the sort of thing you _shouldn't_ be reading.

"Modern C++ Design" is really intended for advanced C++ programmers only. I don't feel it gives a very good impression of the language to new developers - there are so many awful hacks in that book.

It's the sort of thing that you should hold off on until you have the experience with the language necessary to be wise about when such techniques are appropriate.

Re: Smalltalk: Swimming with the fish

#87

Post by fractallyte »

_mhr_ wrote: post #83
fractallyte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."…

Sorry, this is completely unrelated, but I've been trying to email you, and it keeps bouncing. What's happened?

No idea! Try my username at gmail...
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