Smalltalk with James Robertson

This is from Evelyn Van Orden, whose history with Smalltalk goes all the way back:

Smalltalk-80 was launched from the ivory tower of PARC on April 24, 1983. InfoWorld published an article May 30, 1983 with a picture of the "Smalltalk" balloon that was on the lawn at PARC that day: InfoWorld May 30, 1983: Smalltalk-80 is official

I was there.

Adele Goldberg and Dave Robson autographed my Blue Book. Adele autographed my Orange Book which has my Appendix titled "Smalltalk-80 Software Development Do's and Don'ts". Glenn Krasner autographed my Green Book.

30 Years of Smalltalk
Next Spring will mark 30 years since that launch. February of this year was exactly 20 years since I left Xerox and retired from the software industry, and I was curious about the state of Smalltalk in the marketplace. So I started researching online and contacting colleagues from those early days to see if there might be any interest in organizing an event to celebrate Smalltalk’s 30th Anniversary.

This Summer, I spoke with Adele Goldberg, Dave Robson, Dr. Tom Love (1st commercial Smalltalk-80 customer; co-developer of Objective-C), Angela Coppola (contract manager for The Analyst), Georg Heeg, and many others.

I learned that the Smalltalk Industry Council (STIC) has been holding annual Smalltalk developer conferences, and Georg Heeg (whom I met in 1984) is the Executive Director. After discussions with Georg and his team from Cincom Systems, GemStone, and Instantiations, it was decided that the theme of the 2013 Conference will be "30 Years of Smalltalk"

Smalltalk Conference 2013
The STIC’13 Conference will be held June 9-12, 2013 at the Wigwam Resort in Litchfield Park (Phoenix). The Call for Participation is being finalized and will include a Call for Papers about the history of Smalltalk, specifically information that has not been published elsewhere.

What We Need
We need your help to make the conference and the reunion a success:

• Invite colleagues to participate - send their contact info to me or ask them to connect with me on LinkedIn
• Historical information, especially info not previously published: send stories, interviews, photos, videos, etc.
• Donations of memorabilia for a silent auction; proceeds to benefit software engineering scholarships
• Attendance at and ideas for a 30 Years of Smalltalk Reunion Banquet to be held during the conference
• Submission of papers - Call for Participation will be available soon

Please contact me if you’re interested in participating.

Smalltalk Rules!

Evelyn Van Orden
Director, Smalltalk 30th Anniversary Reunion
STIC’13

Technorati Tags: stic13

Interested in helping Redline Smalltalk get to the finish line?

We are currently running an indiegogo campaign to raise money to have James Ladd be able to work on Redline Smalltalk full time for a while. The goal is to be able to come out of it with a production usable version 1.0 Smalltalk running on the JVM.

We'd appreciate if you could spread the word about the campaign amongst anyone you know that might be interested and of course, donations are welcomed as well.

Thanks for spreading the word

Technorati Tags: redline, jvm

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at adding query capability to a fusion map layer in the Google maps API. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. Join the Facebook Group to discuss the tutorials. You can view the archives here.

To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: javascript, maps

Via Torsten:

A new NativeBoost version 1.7 for Pharo 2.0 (which is still alpha as of today) is now available.

Technorati Tags: pharo, native boost

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at readng objects from collections in Smalltalk - streams are hardly limited to strings. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

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If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Today we'll have a look at reading arbitrary collections via streams. In Smalltalk, streams can be used to read any collection (not just strings). For example: here we set up a ByteArray, and then read from it:

stream := #[12 23 34 78 99] readStream.
collection := OrderedCollection new.
collection add: stream next.
collection skip: 2.
collection add: stream next.
^collection

If you inspect the results, you'll see the collection #(12 78). You can do the same with collections of disparate objects:

stream2 := #('one' 2 'four' 16.2 $F 81) readStream.
collection2 := OrderedCollection new.
collection2 add: stream2 next.
collection2 skip: 2.
collection2 add: stream2 next.
^collection2

Inspecting the results will give you the collection #('one' 16.2). Next time, we'll look at writing collections using streams.

Need more help? There's a screencast for other topics like this which you may want to watch. Questions? Try the "Chat with James" Google gadget over in the sidebar.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, streams

At least at the fast food end, it looks like it's possible:

Single-item menus, zero line cooks and almost no wait times, MM’s proposed restaurant would be completely minimalist and tailored to improve guests’ experiences. Capable of pushing out approximately 360 burgers an hour, the machine takes up only 24 square feet, allowing for more spacious seating areas and hopefully more time spent improving the overall dining experience.

The full service restaurant will never go out of style; you're paying for the experience, not just dinner. But at the low end? I expect a lot of those jobs to die the same way factory jobs have.

Technorati Tags: robots

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at the gt() function in JQuery. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. Join the Facebook Group to discuss the tutorials. You can view the archives here.

To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: javascript, maps

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at the time profiler in Pharo Smalltalk. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, pharo, profiler

A YouTube channel has been set up - all the content from the conference will end up there.

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Redline Smalltalk has progressed to a point where you can give it a try yourself.

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Welcome to episode 104 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week we have another recording from the STIC 2012 conference - Georg Heeg talking about new Smalltalk projects. If you would rather watch the video, head on over to the STIC website.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Troublemaker for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to jarober@gmail.com - or visit us on Facebook - you can subscribe in iTunes using this iTunes enabled feed.. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, stic12

Welcome to episode 104 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week we have another recording from the STIC 2012 conference - Georg Heeg talking about new Smalltalk projects. If you would rather watch the video, head on over to the STIC website.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Troublemaker for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to jarober@gmail.com - or visit us on Facebook - you can subscribe in iTunes using this iTunes enabled feed.. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, stic12

There won't be any screencasts for Thursday and Friday, as I'm visiting family for the holiday. The podcast will be taking a weekend off as well. Happy Thanksgiving to all!