(untitled)

Smalltalk thread?

Am I the only one who is slightly annoyed by how smalltalk VM's sort of encourage ravioli code? I'd rather scroll up and down in a text file than have a godawful number of different windows open in the VM that each hold a tiny snippet of code.

>>793 Yes that is very annoying that Smalltalk is so deeply integrated into the UI. I think GNU Smalltalk is console based though. Here is an important link for anyone who wants to learn Smalltalk, almost all the important books on Smalltalk are free to download on this site: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html

>>793 You're not alone. I never really got SmallTalk either, and I've written code in Lisp and Factor. Maybe you should try GNU SmallTalk? It uses source files instead of a weird VM. You'd be missing out on the benefits of a traditional SmallTalk, but it might be easier to switch over after you're used to the syntax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Smalltalk http://smalltalk.gnu.org/

>>793 That's supposed to be its strength though. Lispers often complain about the lack of programming environments that understand and be integrated in the program they're writing, which is exactly what Smalltalk offers. You might just use text files, but then you'd be missing out on half of Smalltalk.

>>802 I wouldn't mind an editing mode that can automatically pull all members of a class and display them in a single box though. Possibly with the capability of expanding/collapsing each snippet. I find it easier to visualize 100-line chunks of code when I can see all of it at once, instead of having to navigate between them in a browser.

>>793 What implementation?

I've not delved too deeply, but Pharo is based on SmallTalk and has a really intuitive user interface. Even as a first timer opening up the program the first time you won't be at a loss to do, since an introduction can be opened right away.

>>802 I don't see how a SmallTalk style class browser is necessary for that. I just want something like >>804

hey pals, i gotta do a smalltalk game on squak for this one class, specifically a kakuro (kinda like a sudoku but different). i decided i'll follow this tutorial http://squeak.preeminent.org/tut2007/html/ and also found this youtube playlist but it seems a bit long-winded for what i am in need of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZErBi5ton0&list=PL6601A198DF14788D&index=2 i should finish it in 3 days total in order to not lag behind on other stuff, if anyone has any advice or useful resources, such as specifically handy tutorials, rather than say, a book that'll take me longer to read and teach me more than i need to know, then i'll be really happy if you share it with me, thanks! :)

>>1402 Here's a MOOC that was made for Pharo (a fork of Squeak), it has slides, flipping through them will probably help you: http://files.pharo.org/mooc/

>>1404 hmm, this mooc is in french and very inconvinient to download but thank you. I found two resources that look very promising: Pharo by example: http://files.pharo.org/books-pdfs/updated-pharo-by-example/2017-01-14-UpdatedPharoByExample.pdf Squeak by example: https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00441576/file/SBE.pdf both books, haven't gone through them but at least as far as squeak it's the best i've found, it assumes you know OOP and it gets right to the good stuff. The squeak one is an archive, as the original site is defunct, so that may happen with these links too.

also for understanding the sintax (not the smalltalk vm) https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/smalltalk/

>>1490 The videos are French, the slides and subtitles are in English. Have you managed to write the game?

>>1492 working on it. Yeah i noticed, im sorry im not dismissing it, it's just im being very picky with sources as i cannot invest a lot of time into 1 source without knowing if it'll teach me what i need to get this done in a sensible amount of time. I'll update you on how this ends, unless i don't finish it hah.

There is a version of Squeak that runs on Android if youre running an old version of Android on your phone, like say around 2014, then I think that Squeak will show up in Google Play

Here is a good tutorial series on Squeak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es7RyllOS-M&index=1&list=PL6601A198DF14788D

While I love many of the ideas behind smalltalk, It seems to fall into the same ourobouros trap as many LISPers; i.e. you spend all your time in a tweakable dev environment, tweaking the dev environment so that you can more and more efficiently tweak your dev environment. If you enjoy hacking smalltalk, that's fine; but your code won't see many other people using it. Please prove me wrong, I'd love to see some examples of real, useful applications for smalltalk. With this in mind, I think GNU Smalltalk deserves more attention and respect. Smalltalkers seem to treat it like a failed smalltalk since it doesn't have a full VM with GUIs and object browsers, but that's also it's killer feature: all the power of the smalltalk language without the cruft of adopting an entire ecosystem.

P.S.: Anyone tried Self? How does it compare with the Smalltalks?

how can i get started on learning Smalltalk? I'm curious! pleasea?

>>4719 >how can i get started on learning Smalltalk? Step one is to hop into a time machine back to 1980 when Smalltalk was last used.

>>4719 some french guy made almost every Smalltalk book freely available http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html I recommend starting with Squeak

>>4722 Why Squeak? I'm basically retarded!

>>4722 Whats a good book specifically to start with? The blue book?

>>4726 Smalltalk as a language was designed at Xerox PARC to integrate with a graphical interface. Its very important to choose a good implementation of Smalltalk because Smalltalk as a language is designed to only communicate within its own ecosystem. Right now the only two implementations that are still supported are Squeak and Dolphin (I dont even mention GNU Smalltalk as its command line only and really unusable for anything). Squeak was orginally designed to teach children but its a very full featured Smalltalk with only minor differences to the Smalltalk 80 standard. >>4730 Just download Squeak by Example https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/SqueakByExample-english

>>4734 But Im not a kid

>>4734 I understood squeak was essentially deprecated, and everyone moved to Pharo these days

>>4739 Right. Either Pharo, or one of the webdev smalltalks like Amber.

>>4742 >>4734 >>4734 >>4739 >>4739 So is it Pharo or Squeak?

>>4745 Pharo has the biggest active community. Squeak is still fairly popular in teaching iirc.

is This soykaf as bad a java? Why would you ever use the granddaddy of java? I fuarrrking shudder

>>4734 So is there much of a difference? If someone learned on Squeak and then moved over to something else would they be fuarrrked?

>>4753 No, Squeak is a fully functional Smalltalk implementation. Its not a toy, you can make very complex applications for Squeak. I shouldnt have said its for kids, its more like high school and college level programming training. >>4752 Alan Kay hates C++ and Java and thinks that the form of OO used in those languages is very primitive being nothing more than an extension of C structs.

>>4719 this is a really good book for learning good OO in general even if you never use Smalltalk

On the topic of Smalltalk-related documents, I just found this paper on adding multimethods to Smalltalk: http://www.laputan.org/reflection/Foote-Johnson-Noble-ECOOP-2005.html

>>4755 Imho, smalltalk is one of the most overrated languages that exist. My opinion of smalltalk and smalltalk programmers went down a lot after spending more time using it. I'd pick any modern dynamic language over it to be honest. The simple syntax is not a plus, because unlike in the case of lisp it doesn't really add any expressive power that you don't get from dynamic dispatch, lambdas, and continuations. Lisp has a simple syntax too, but it doesn't actively prevent you from forming expressions with a given structure because it is the actual parse tree, and it gets to have macros because it is homoiconic. The simple syntax of smalltalk is a straightjacket, not a boon.

>>6502 How long did you use it and for what?