Smalltalk with James Robertson

It looks like Xtreams is getting attention beyond the world of Smalltalk implementations. Derek Williams writes:

Smalltalk is home to perhaps the first truly elegant streams implementation, particularly when compared to other approaches developed around that time, such as those in C and C++. You can’t get much simpler than ‘myfile.txt’ asFilename readStream contents to open and read a file, and yet there’s significant power in the classes behind that. But new designs for stream libraries since followed, including pluggable/chainable I/O stream architectures, such as those found in Java, C#, and even advanced parallel stream processing frameworks. Not to be outdone, Michael Lucas-Smith and Martin Kobetic have recently developed a new pluggable stream framework for Smalltalk called Xtreams, and I couldn’t resist giving it a try.

There's a lot more there; follow the link.

Technorati Tags: xtreams, streams

If you're interested, visit his site for the embedded video.

There was a bunch of Smalltalk at the recent "Dynamic Stockholm" event - Martin Vilcans has a pretty good writeup of his impressions. I particularly like this:

Björn Eiderbäck’s final talk about Smalltalk was inspiring. Smalltalk is a nice language. For good or bad, it has the idea that it is not only a programming language, but a complete environment. You don’t just edit Smalltalk in a text editor and compile it on the command line. The development environment and the runtime is tightly coupled in a way that provides some very nice dynamic features for development and debugging. At the same time, you’re very much tied to the environment, so if you don’t like its text editor for example, you’re not going to be happy. The whole idea is perhaps too different, especially if you’re a text editor and command-line person. For example, Björn briefly showed the built-in version control of the Smalltalk environment, something that I would prefer to use an external tool for. (Here I admittedly express the kind of conservatism that suppresses progress.)

That's a pretty good summation of how a lot of people see Smalltalk - very cool, but.... they want to use external tools. I went through a phase where I really thought that would be a good idea, but I'm back to being unsure.

Smalltalk is the image - if you lose that, I'm not really sure that you have Smalltalk any longer.

Update: More here.

I've set up a Facebook group for "Smalltalk 4 U" - you can watch the videos there, comment on them, and give me feedback on suggested topics.

Technorati Tags: st4u, facebook

The new Smalltalk podcasts - Smalltalk 4 U and Independent Misinterpretations are available in the iTunes store:

• Smalltalk 4 U in iTunes
• Independent Misinterpretations in iTunes

That should make them easier to find :)

Technorati Tags: st4u, im, independent misinterpretations

There's a lot of things that I could cover in the new "Smalltalk 4 U" series I've started up - I intend to do a whole set of "how to install X" ones first, including the Cincom products. As an outside person, I'll walk through that the same way you would - registration, NC download, followed by installation.

After I get that set of stuff out of the way though, things are a bit more open. I was thinking of doing a set on the "standard" libraries in Smalltalk - streams and collections being the most obvious, and covering interesting aspects in each of the products I'm looking at.

Anyone have better/different ideas? Let me know!

Spotted in Planet Squeak

Levente Uzonyi is obviously one of a number of people who have been quite envious of the built-in tab-completion in Pharo, so he’s put in the work required to make OCompletion work on Squeak images again. OCompletion works in two ways: it offers a short list of automatic completion hints as you type based on your recent activity, or you can bring up the fuller (classic eCompletion) list by using the tab key, and use the up and down arrow keys to navigate the list and the right arrow to reveal syntax-highlighted source code for the methods listed.

It's interesting how much faster this kind of thing makes it into Squeak and Pharo than into the commercial Smalltalk implementations. There are various reasons for that, but as an end user of Smalltalk those reasons fade off into the middle distance and just make the freely available tools that much more desirable....

Technorati Tags: squeak, tab completion, auto complete

Georg Heeg, Executive Director of STIC, has issued a call for participation for StS 2011, to be held in Las Vegas, March 13-16:

The conference will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 13 – 16, 2011. Presentations may be in the form of:

• Technical Presentations
• Experience Reports
• Technology Demonstrations
• Panel Discussions
• Half-day Tutorials
• Other interesting ideas ...

You'll need to send your proposals to STS_Speakers@stic.st. Follow the first link to find out exactly what details to include.

Technorati Tags: sts2011, smalltalk solutions

The Redline Smalltalk project - running Smalltalk on the JVM - seems to be moving forward. There's:

• A Website
• A Blog
• And a Twitter Feed that brings up an Eclipse plugin

Hat tip Torsten

Technorati Tags: redline, smalltalk on jvm

Arden linked to his roadmap presentation from ESUG 2010. You can see all of the ESUG videos as they roll out on the STIC archive page

Technorati Tags: esug2010, smalltalk, cst