#smalltalk

Hot take: your first three #programming languages should be #lua, then #clojure, then #smalltalk. Your production language should be your fourth language.

@screwtape
However, the workaround, so that you need not wait an unbounded and unguessable amount of time, is to go to the post's home server.

(The post is about "I like all #programming languages but I have only a few that are my favourites. #Smalltalk is one of those few. But all the current open-source implementations still sport that Smalltalk-80, last-Century chic look....[back then Smalltalk] looked positively fresh, futuristic, and fun. But that look is now 45 years old." Etc.)

In the hopefully unlikely absence of still further errors, it should then be immediately readable -- although I believe *replying* to such a thing still results in that remote-to-you server telling your Mastodon client to take you back to your home server to make the reply.

I forget if I always have to actually follow the person who posted as an additional step in that reply.

@AmenZwa @programming I can only agree with you. Wonderful language that reads like a novel, a structure as clear as a well-stocked state library and a surface like a house with lots of beautiful rooms from needs to hobbies.

#Smalltalk

I like all #programming languages but I have only a few that are my favourites. #Smalltalk is one of those few. But all the current open-source implementations still sport that Smalltalk-80, last-Century chic look.

I learned the language on the XEROX Smalltalk-80 system, so this look-and-feel holds that certain nostalgic charm for me. And when we were all using the VT100 terminal, Smalltalk's bitmap graphics and MVC GUI looked positively fresh, futuristic, and fun. But that look is now 45 years old. My goodness, let us just get over those garish colours and serif fonts, already!

These days, #Pharo's look-and-feel is perhaps the least offensive to the modern eye. But even it has that mouldy, cheesy look.

I am perfectly happy to use the classic Smalltalk-80 language in its original form; its design is ageless. But I find no technical, economical, practical, or aesthetic justifications for retaining that 1980s' look-and-feel in the 2025 implementations.

Actually, Smalltalk images are the original containers

#Smalltalk #Containers

I recently stumbled upon a #YouTube #Video where people are blaming/mocking themselves for not speaking perfectly #English. I don't understand that kind of #Behavior. #Why? Seriously, why? For me, it's most important that I can call an #Ambulance, report a #Fire or a #Crime in a #Foreign #Language. To be capable of socially acceptable #SmallTalk is of course also a nice #Ability to have. But dealing with an actual #Emergency is IMHO more #Important than asking a #Stranger how they feel today…

Ken Dickey presented his single-stroke pen/stylus gesture recognizer for #CuisSmalltalk written in #smalltalk

https://youtu.be/M9OQNkS525g?si=FW3c3bVrK50LGl_G

https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-UI/tree/main/tools

Small- to medium-sized businesses should shun the massive web #UI frameworks and application services being peddled by BigIT, when developing their small, internal-use business applications intended for use by a handful of in-house business analysts. Instead, these companies should use #Smalltalk (Pharo, Cuis, or Squeak) to develop such software. Smalltalk has tonnes of advantages—not to mention decades of track record—for implementing enterprise applications:

• It is purely OO with decent FP facilities (it is the precursor of modern OO-FP hybrids)
• Its simple syntax can be described on a 5×7 card
• It is easy to get comfortable with, so much so that generations of preteens have used it in classrooms, so an experienced modern programmer can pick up the language in mere minutes
• It is powerful enough to implement itself, its libraries, its UI, and the whole blessed OS on the Alto
• It is the progenitor of the MVC pattern and, since IBM VisualAge, all modern implementations use the time-tested MVP pattern
• Its persistent VM obviates the need to export application state to external persistent media like file system or relation database (the VM is the application state, as it were)

Pharo Smalltalk, sponsored by INREA, is my favourite. Its creator, Stephan Ducasse, is friendly and accommodating, and is a prolific writer. See this Pharo Books list: https://books.pharo.org.

Those who are leading SmallIT should read these Pharo books:

• Pharo by Example (language)
• Enterprise Pharo (usage)
• Testing in Pharo (TDD)
• Application with Spec 2.0 (GUI)

Pharo does support conventional IT practices:

• Zinc HTTP
• Seaside web UI framework
• Voyage object database
• Glorp ORP

@juanvuletich presented past (2023-2024) and future evolution (2025-2026) of #CuisSmalltalk #Smalltalk
https://youtu.be/u4xROqt6sd4?si=2u-FBfSXvPMyrB47

#SqueakJS—#Squeak and #Cuis full-fledged #Smalltalk can now run in any #browser.

https://squeak.js.org/

#Smalltalk #Units

My Phellow Pharo #Programmers who write scientific #software, do have a look at the Units package, which can safely perform mixed-unit computations like the following to obtain the correct result \(63.21 ft\):

\(\texttt{14foot + 15m.}\)

The NASA-Lockheed Mars Climate Orbiter catastrophe could have been avoided, had the probe control software been implemented in Smalltalk.

https://github.com/zweidenker/Units

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#:~:text=The%20spacecraft%20encountered%20Mars%20on,by%20spacecraft%20builder%20Lockheed%20Martin.

10 Unusual Things About Me: https://lydiaschoch.com/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-10-unusual-things-about-me-2/ #WednesdayWeeklyBloggingChallenge #SmallTalk #Blogging

#Kommunikation
Ich mag keinen #Smalltalk, ich finde ihn meistens zu oberflächlich und oft laufen solche Gespräche schnell ins Leere. Dieser Artikel zeigt einige Ansätze, wie man interessantere Gespräche führen kann, die Smalltalk als Ausgangsbasis haben:

https://utopia.de/ratgeber/unangenehmen-small-talk-vermeiden-einfacher-trick-macht-gespraeche-viel-interessanter_797050/

#CuisSmalltalk method finder tool. Volkmann presents us the Method finder tool he has developed recently.
#smalltalk

https://youtu.be/BxYw_KQs2cM?si=1Kd5L1IJexVUTyz3

#CuisSmalltalk team work around a shared #Smalltalk image to enhance class and method comments. It felt tricky at first but at the end we felt we learn things.

https://youtu.be/p8zFswnoYzQ?si=OZheUafgHqI-Hsi3

Windy... @drgeo #CuisSmalltalk #Smalltalk

The Xerox PARC alumni who contribute to the Medley Interlisp project shared the buttons they collected at computing conferences in the 1980s and 1990s such as AAAI, IJCAI, SIGGRAPH.

The buttons are awesome and span a range of languages and systems such as Interlisp, Lisp Machines, Smalltalk, Unix, Modula-2, Mesa, Pilot, and more. Be sure to go through the whole thread.

https://groups.google.com/g/lispcore/c/ylsMetI3D0I/m/CtGXmMn3AQAJ

#retrocomputing #interlisp #lisp #smalltalk #unix

Hey, it's #AmstradCPC #Smalltalk time again!
First of all, ùCPM fanzine released their 6th issue including my article introducing the project (lovely designed and printed on CPC, and great choice of illustrations, unfortunately for some of you, it's in French)

After a few days of thinking, I decided to throw away my semi-generational gc, and instead use the Baker two-space gc. It is simpler, and hopefully it's faster. The memory "waste" should be fine, I have lots of memory anyways?

@AmenZwa

> "The original versions of those classic languages cannot be used to solve modern problems"

The original versions of those classic languages are Turing complete, and consequently they can be used to solve all problems which can be solved through computation.

#Lisp
#SmallTalk

The original #LISP had 7 primitives: \(\texttt{cons}\), \(\texttt{car,}\) \(\texttt{cdr}\), \(\texttt{atom}\), \(\texttt{quote}\), \(\texttt{eq}\), and \(\texttt{cond}\). And the original #Smalltalk syntax could fit on a 5×7 card. That meant a novice could learn the syntax in a matter of minutes, and direct all his efforts to learning how properly to wield the power of that Turing-complete language. This was why, in the 1970s and the 1980s, many college freshmen were taught FP in Scheme (a more modern LISP) and many middle school children were taught OO in Smalltalk. These were surely the best "first" #programming languages.

#FORTRAN and #BASIC were simple, too. FORTRAN, the first high-level language, has been in continuous use since the late 1950s by engineers, who are not keyboard warriors. BASIC was invented in the early 1960s for teaching programming to non-STEM students at Dartmouth. It sired a whole generation of self-taught children in the 1980s.

Compare those to C++, Erlang, Python, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Scala, Rust, Kotlin, and pretty much every language in popular use today. Most consider Python and JavaScript to be the simplest of modern languages. Yet, they are massive, complex languages. No 10-year-old could teach himself those, nor should he.

The original versions of those classic languages cannot be used to solve modern problems. But they should still be taught to youngsters as their first language. Throwing in the kids' faces a modern enterprise language confuses them and discourages them. Consequently, many novices never attain that state of flow, when the joy of programming gushes forth.

#Simplicity is a virtue. Self-motivated learning is virtuous.