Posts by timrowledge 233 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Oct 2016
Almost exclusively Squeak, occasionally Cuis (a fork focussing on quality vector graphics and some new ui ideas), very occasionally Pharo (another fork focussing on some ideas about pushing boundaries and production). Very rarely, Visual Works but I’m not really pleased with how it has changed since I was the engineering manager back in the 90s.
No, I suspect you inferred ‘operating’ in front of ‘system ‘ in my comment. Just as C has no language constructs for I/o (well, it didn’t last time I had to use it, who knows these days) Smalltalk needs no language construct for ownership etc. The system written in it can have whatever you want. And yes, perhaps some VM support would be nice, but we’ve done that plenty of times before.
Also I think you’re forgetting that in practical usage we do still run Smalltalk on an OS and make use of that OS. The trick is to try to make it easy to do everything from within Smalltalk. We do fairly well but not perfect.
On a Raspberry Pi 5 (not even one with an NVME hat) my working Smalltalk image goes from d-click to ready to start typing in essentially no time - an eyeblink at most. It includes all the development tools, code browsing tools - that use proper antialiased, proportionally spaced fonts, compiler, a bunch of games, a web application development system, documentation system, web server framework, code & version management system, graphics libraries, database connectivity (Postgres in this particular instances)... everything. Bang, there, ready. If I need to copy it across to a different machine - maybe my x64 Ubuntu-box, or a colleague’s Widows machine, or a Mac, it will work identically on that.
It just makes sense.
Load a copy of Squeak (from Squeak dot .org) on your Pi and read a few books (legally) downloaded from http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html and/or watch some relevant YouTube videos. And join the Squeak mailing list.
I’ve been making a living with Smalltalk (almost entirely on ARM) for a tad over 40 years and any time I have to spend on nasty textfile languages is anathema. Just today I had to poke at a Python program to fix a problem and.. no, just no. That is so very not the way to do it.
“environments such as Smalltalk and Lisp suffer from not having per-object ownership and access rights”
I claim that
A) this is not something ones suffers from. It’s my objects. Nobody else gets to play there.
B) this is not something for the language to handle, it would be for the system
C) pretty sure gemstone can provide it
Smalltalk can do version control perfectly well, thank you very much. For code centric uses, there is Monticello, or changesets, or Tonel/git, or Pundles and so forth. For more info centric needs people have made assorted solutions ranging from simple to expansive (gemstone, for example).
I mean, seriously, if it couldn’t, how could so many important ideas have been originated in it?
“I don't care for Smalltalk, which in its original form contains an idiotic decision to color-code source code”
No it didn’t. The original Smalltalk couldn’t have, since it ran monochrome. Stop bullshitting.
Many modern Smalltalk systems *can* syntax if you want them to. And if you don’t, then set the preferences to not do it.
"those ancient Lisp and Smalltalk workstations had limitations: they were single-processor and single threaded "
Single processor, yes mostly - there were exceptions. Single threaded - nonsense. Smalltalk has had multi-threaded execution since.. well almost forever.
Y'what? That is total and utter nonsense. Smalltalk has *always* been able to pass code around. From simple text files, to imagesegments, to Monticello packages, to the git based system Pharo uses, Envy, Metacello... How the hell did you think we share and collaborate?
I occasionally point people at the old Byte August 1981 edition (https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08/page/n296/mode/1up?view=theater) to introduce them to Smalltalk, but it has the secondary value of having hilarious pricing.
For example, 64Kb ram S100 bus cards for a mere $995. Osborne 1 a mere $1795. 300 baud modems just $799! Atari 800 with a whole 32k ram $759.
It’s a computer. It has what you load it with. Want it set up to use as a modest desktop? OK. Want it set up as a NAS? OK. A 3D printer controller? Sure.
If you want an “educational workstation “ load one of the setups produced by a variety of groups that have put in work to make them. You have GPIO pins to drive a staggering list of cool doohickeys that can teach about sensors and motors and effectors and imagers and noise makers and hell, control a nuclear reactor.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
