Smalltalks 2010 – conference report
18 November, 2010
Smalltalks 2010 took place last weekend, meaning that the post-conference reports have started hitting the blogs, and they’re universally enthusiastic about the content, organisation and atmosphere of the event.
Organised by Fundacion Argentina de Smalltalk (FAST), and hosted this year by Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, in Concepción del Uruguay, Smalltalks aims to “strengthen the Argentine and international Smalltalk communities through the exchange of works, experiences and anecdotes connected with this technology or related matters”. This year’s speakers included Gilad Bracha, Eliot Miranda, Lukas Renggli and many many more (see the conference home page for a full listing and descriptions of talks).
German Arduino described it as an “excellent event, with very very good organization—thanks to the hard work of FAST people—and high level technical talks”.
Felipao Banados was attending his first Smalltalk conference, and was also impressed: “I remember talking with classmates and hearing things like ‘Yeah, Smalltalk, nice. But where can you work on that afterwards?’ Well, there ARE a lot of interesting places to do it, and there is a need for smalltalk programmers.”
Andrés Valloud posted some rocking photos of the social event, and reported that the conference even got coverage in the local paper, including a video interview with Hernán Wilkinson.
As James Robertson wrote: “Sounds a lot like ESUG to me – and that’s a good thing.”
Design Principles Behind Smalltalk
5 October, 2010
Lambda the Ultimate is celebrating 10 years of its own existence, 30 (nominal) years of Smalltalk-80 and PARC turning 40, by revisiting a classic article Design Principles Behind Smalltalk by Dan Ingalls. From the post: “Ingalls’s piece should be filed under Visionary Languages. Alas, no such category exists on LtU.” Does this mean that Smalltalk-80 was the last visionary language?
ESUG Innovation Technology Awards – sneak preview
26 August, 2010
This year’s ESUG conference will host the 6th annual Innovation Technology Awards. The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive, respectively, €500, €300 and €200 during an awards ceremony at the conference. Developers of any Smalltalk-based software are welcome to compete, and, for the first time, this year entrants are asked to provide a 3-5min video explaining each entry.
There are lots of interesting projects up for the competition, based on Squeak, Pharo, VisualWorks, and Smalltalk/X. You can find out more about the competition at http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2010/Innovation+Technology+Awards, and of course, you’ll be able to see them for yourself at the conference. See you there!
Smalltalk: the past, the present, and the future?
15 July, 2010
Anyone with an interest in the continuing role and development of Smalltalk has had lots to chew on over the past few days.
As part of a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages, Computerworld Australia has published a conversation with Alan Kay about his role in the development of the “foundation of much of modern programming today: Smalltalk-80″, Object-Oriented Programming, and modern software development.
InfoQ is running a series of interviews recorded at QCon London. One of these is a session with Ralph Johnson and Joe Armstrong discussing the Future of OOP, including their take on what Smalltalk got wrong and right.
Finally, Gilad Bracha continues to lay out his vision for what he sees as Smalltalk’s successor, Newspeak. His latest post contains encouragement and advice for those interested in porting existing libraries and applications to Newspeak.
Calling all Smalltalkers!
2 July, 2010
Luc Fabresse invites all Smalltalkers to submit your Smalltalk based software to the 7th ESUG Innovation Technology Awards. The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive, respectively, €500, €300 and €200 during an awards ceremony at the 18th International Smalltalk Joint Conference 2010 in Barcelona, Spain.
No constraints are put on the software except that it should be Smalltalk-based or Smalltalk-related and all flavours of Smalltalk are accepted. Last year’s entries included student projects, one-man labours of love, and full commercial applications.
Don’t forget that early registrations for the conference are only open for another month. You can register at http://registration.esug.org/ (running on Seaside). This server comes with new features: you can now do a group registration and make a single payment; it also allows you to book and pay for reduction tickets (typically for Golden and Platinum sponsors).
The ESUG 2010 conference preliminary schedule is available at http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2010
Smalltalks 2009 videos and photos available
12 December, 2009
Hernan Wilkinson wrote to the squeak -dev mailing list that the Smalltalks 2009 presentations are available now at the Smalltalks Conference site under the “Talks” tab. Given that the speakers included such well-known figures as Dan Ingalls, Stephane Ducasse, Alex Warth, Tim Mackinnon, James Foster and Travis Griggs, there should be some fascinating viewing to be had.
Hernan added: “You can watch also the video used during the presentation that summarizes the previous two years of the conference, it is a very nice video. It is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekRhvg7W6AQ“.
There are also links to other videos and pictures from the conference home page.
Scratch featured in “Communications of the ACM”
20 November, 2009
Scratch is the cover story of the November 2009 issue of CACM, the monthly magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Scratch is a visual programming language, developed in Squeak, that makes it easy to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share these creations on the web. Aimed at children between the ages of 8 and 16, Scratch has developed a thriving community, with over 1000 new projects being uploaded to the site every day.
In inviting the Scratch team to submit an article, the editor of CACM explained his motivation: “A couple of days ago, a colleague of mine (CS faculty) told me how she tried to get her 10-year-old daughter interested in programming, and the only thing that appealed to her daughter (hugely) was Scratch.”
The submitted article is also available for viewing online.
Return To Smalltalk
7 November, 2009
The NYC Smalltalk group manages an active programme of talks and presentations, and this month’s talk looks to be very interesting. Daniel Antion, Vice President of Information Services at American Nuclear Insurers, discusses why his company began planning to migrate away from Smalltalk, and the evolving circumstances that caused them to take the difficult decision to reverse this strategy.
Dan has been working in Smalltalk since 1994 and develops most of ANI’s transaction processing systems. Dan has presented at Smalltalk Solutions, OOPSLA and the AIIM Expo on topics related to systems development, content management and SharePoint.
Dan’s experience and position within ANI mean that he can offer some real insights into the perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of Smalltalk from a corporate perspective, and the ongoing challenges it faces. He says “I’m not sure we saved Smalltalk forever but we bought it some serious time. The technical details that work for Smalltalk include its stability, malleability and extensibility. We still have concerns but we think they can be mitigated.”
If you’re going to be in New York on 18th November, find out more about Dan’s talk on the NYC Smalltalk website.
(Image by meironke on flickr)
Smalltalks 2009
23 September, 2009
Following on from their high-profile presence at ESUG this year, the Argentinian Smalltalk community are preparing to host their third annual domestic Smalltalk conference, Smalltalks 2009.
Running from 19th to 21st November in Buenos Aires, the conference’s goal is to “gather both the Argentine and International Smalltalk community to get connected sharing our work and experience with regards to Smalltalk or related topics”.
The conference will have two streams: “Research and Education” for research and education work done with Smalltalk in universities and public or private
entities; and “Industry and Development” for presentations related to Smalltalk software developed by companies or individuals, both public and private.
In addition, the event will host a Smalltalk programming contest. As in previous years, well known personalities from the international community will attend the conference.
All those connected with Smalltalk, be it faculty, students, researchers, developers or entrepreneurs, are invited to participate, free of charge, as presenters and members of the audience.
In addition, early registrants get a great-looking T-shirt for free, so get your bookings in now!
ESUG Innovation Technology Awards – Time is running out!
29 June, 2009
The Innovation Technology Awards session is one of the real highlights of the annual International Smalltalk Conference organised by ESUG each year.
Noury Bouraqadi has just posted to remind everyone that you only have until 1st July to nominate your work for an award. Put together a brief description of your work, which can be in any Smalltalk dialect, make it available for inspection online, and be prepared to demonstrate it to a constant stream of inquisitive Smalltalkers during the conference, and you could win up to €500 in addition to the recognition and respect of your peers.
Have a look at Noury’s site for an introduction to the ideas that have proved popular in the past, or our own details of last year’s winners.
All the administrative details can be found on the ESUG 2009 website – so get those application forms in now!
And in case you’ve forgotten, this year’s conference is in Brest, France from 31 August—4 September, 2009. It will be preceded by Camp Smalltalk running on the weekend of 29—30 August 2009, and incorporates the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies on 31 August.
