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Years ago Google started the developing of V8, a super Just in time compiler for its Chrome Browser.

The V8 compiler revamped competition: Microsoft and Mozilla foundation strike back optimizing their JavaScript interpreters.

On these days, a strong community is growing using Node.js, a web server “Evented I/O [Web application server] for V8 JavaScript“. Node.js sposts a non-blocking architecture which can lead to very fast server, able to process a lot of request with a single thread.

A quick peek on the people now. Lars Bak is the leader of the V8 project. It has worked on the design of Self and on the HotSpot JIT.  Lars Bak also co authored “Mixin in StrongTalk”.

So a lot of the optimization which let  Smalltalk and Java shine, are used in the JavaScript field nowadays. It is a simple “accident” ?…or it is destiny?

JavaScript rocks? There is plenty of documentation all around, even if the first ECMA specification was quite unreadable in my humble opinion  There are some optimal guidelines for JavaScript module writing, for instance see the manuals on JQuery plugin development. But in JavaScript you are still a free player if you wish: no rule, no even need of structuring your code in some way:

var sith={}

sith.name=”DarthVader”;

sith.name=function(){
return “Nevermind, I am a function, now”;
}

The code above builds a very generic object, and add to it properties (which could be a function).

Worst, you get very strange things, evaluting:

[1,2]+[3,4]

you got:

“1,23,4″

This because “+” is not supported for arrays, so the JavaScript  language is effectively doing…

([1,2]+”")+[3,4]

I like dynamic languages like Self, but this is somewhat too…flexible

And last but not least JavaScript lacks a true integrated developement environment, even if here we smalltalkers could help a bit

So, SmallTalk2012 is not this version of JavaScript, at least not yet; JavaScript Harmony specification is working hard trying to polishing the language…As usual, the better way to predict the future is to …invent it… So let’s give Harmony a chance!

Camp Smalltalk is well under way in the bright and modern School of Informatics building at the University of Edinburgh.

Stéphane Ducasse got proceedings off to a flying start yesterday with an intensive introduction to Smalltalk for newcomers. Today, work continues on a number of projects including SUnit, Seaside, Pier, Gofer, SLAPS (an LDAP server implementation) and Spoon.

And, of course, everyone is taking the opportunity to begin catching up with old friends, making new ones, and preparing their presentations for next week’s ESUG Conference.

There have been a couple of interesting pieces of news about Seaside in the last few days.

Sebastiane Sastre and colleagues at flowingconcept.com have brought their new airflowing.com application out of private beta, and are now accepting new commercial subscriptions. Airflowing is an online tool for managing your creative business, including contacts, tasks and finances. It’s designed to be a quick-start tool aimed at people “who need to get things done and get paid” and is already in use in 35 companies. Under the skin it’s based on Smalltalk and Seaside so scaling the application up to meet new customer demand should be no challenge for the team! Find out more about this release and the hard work behind it at the flowingconcept blog, and try a trial subscription at airflowing.com.

At the other end of the scale, Lukas Renggli highlighted a post by Pavel Krivanek to the Seaside mailing list. Pavel has managed to build a working Seaside image weighing in at under 5MB. The image includes the Zinc web server, and is based on a stripped-down Pharo-kernel image. As well as build instructions, Pavel has made a pre-built image available, so check it out!

Worried that you won’t be able to come to Edinburgh for ESUG 2011? Well how about joining your fellow Smalltalkers in Argentina in November for Smalltalks 2011?

The Smalltalks conference brings together more than 200 people from both academia and industry to discuss Smalltalk-based software over three days. Smalltalks conferences have included many high-quality presentations from industry and research, showing interesting applications of Smalltalk, advances in the Smalltalk language, didactic uses of Smalltalk and much more.

This year’s conference runs from 3rd—5th November at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (English site) in Bernal, Argentina (just 15km from Buenos Aires).

As in previous years, there will be a dedicated research track for original scientific contributions to, or using, Smalltalk in general. If you’re interested in submitting a paper for the conference, the hard deadline is 22nd August 2011, with notification of acceptance by 23rd September.

See the call for papers for more details of submission guidelines and criteria.

The 19th International Smalltalk Joint Conference is being held in Edinburgh, Scotland this year on 20-26 August 2011; with Camp Smalltalk running on 20-21 August and the main conference continuing on 22-26 August.

As usual, it will also play host to the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies, a forum to trigger discussion and exchanges ideas around advances or experience in Smalltalk, which will be held on 23 August.

This year will also see the 8th competition for the Innovation Technology Awards for excellent Smalltalk projects.

But, as always, the main attraction will be the chance to meet, discuss and socialise with old and new Smalltalkers from around the world.

There is an open call for papers; registrations are now open; and bookings are being taken for accommodation during the conference (which is being held at the same time as the world famous Edinburgh Festival, so early booking is essential).

To encourage newer Smalltalkers, there is a student volunteer programme, and also the opportunity to apply for one of ten free places by emailing the ESUG board with subject: [ESUG 2011 Free entrance] + your name, and your case for receiving a free place.

You can support the ESUG conference in many different ways:

• Sponsor the conference. New sponsoring packages are described at http://www.esug.org/supportesug/becomeasponsor/
• Submit a talk, a software or a paper to one of the events.
• Attend the conference! The board would like to beat the previous records of attendance (156 participants at Brest, 170 people at Amsterdam, 150 at Barcelona)!

See you all there!

Although we all work with SqueakSource every day, it has been in need of some care and attention for some time now. Fortunately, Tobias Pape and colleagues have been working on a total re-work of the SqueakSource code, and have now announced the availability of their first beta of SqueakSource3, named “Easter Fire”.

SqueakSource3 is a port of the original SqueakSource to Seaside 3 and Magritte 2. It is based on the original SqueakSource by Lukas Renggli, Adrian Lienhard, and Avi Bryant.

The developers’ plan for SqueakSource3 is:
• Have it running on GemStone, esp. GemStone 3 beta
• Provide a cleaner external API (may be REST or XMLRPC)
• Provide a more clear modularization and extension api
• Stability
• You name it! Suggestions are welcome.

SqueakSource3 is expected to run on GemStone/GLASS as well as on squeakish Smalltalks, ie, Pharo and Squeak. This beta has been tested on GemStone 2.4.4.x/GLASS 1.0-beta.8 and Squeak4.2 both with Seaside 3.0.4. Pharo tests are pending.

SqueakSource3 incorporates work done in several SqueakSource forks such as access to diffs in a browser as done by Bert Freudenberg for source.squeak.org and a basic issue tracker contributed by Dale Henrichs. Other key contributors to the project include Philippe Marschal, Dale Henrichs, and Gerhard Obermann have contributed much to SqueakSource3.

See the release announcement for more information, and for instructions on how to install the new code

Chris Muller wrote to the squeak-dev mailing list announcing that Magma 1.2 is now released for Squeak 4.2, Pharo 1.1 and Pharo 1.2.

Magma is a high-performance, fault-tolerant, multi-user object database that provides transparent access to a large-scale shared persistent object model, supports multiple users concurrently via optimistic locking, and uses a simple transaction protocol.

This new release offers bug fixes, new features and improved performance thanks to minimising problems associated with finalisation. In addition, Chris has reviewed and updated the Magma documentation. More information and support is always available from the Magma mailing list.

Chris writes that “this release is, exactly, one year since Magma 1.1, thank you for your patience”. Surely it’s us who should be saying thank you to Chris, for his continued work on this valuable project!

Voting is now under way in this year’s elections for the Squeak Oversight Board.

After some prompting from their colleagues, the following people have thrown their hats into the ring:

• Chris Muller (announcement)
• Randal Schwartz (announcement)
• Edgar De Cleene (announcement)
• Bert Freudenberg (announcement)
• Jecel Assumpcao (announcement)
• Levente Uzonyi (announcement)
• Nikolay Suslov (announcement)
• Chris Cunnington (announcement)
• Merik Voswinkel (announcement)
• Colin Putney (announcement)
• Gary Dunn (announcement)

If you are one of the 460 registered members of the Squeak community you should have received an email “Poll: Squeak Oversight Board Election 2011″ sent by Göran Krampe, who is running the election. If you’ve not got an email and you should have, email voters@squeak.org and Göran will see what he can do.

Find out more at the election wiki page.

Voting closes on 10th April at 18.00 UTC.

Janko Mivšek wrote to the squeak-dev mailing list that “we are preparing an application to this year’s Smalltalk Google Summer of Code under the ESUG umbrella, as last year”.

Google Summer of Code is a global program sponsored by Google that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. The Smalltalk community has a successful record of participation in the scheme, under the aegis of ESUG in recent years, and our organisers are looking for students and ideas, (and even better, students with ideas) for our entry in this year’s programme.

Janko asks Smalltalkers to “please start thinking about ideas what projects would be nice to have. Also start looking around for students. How to approach the universitites near by you, do you know who to contact there, etc”.

To see last year’s ideas and projects, visit the site for last year’s students. You can find out more at the new Smalltalk GSoC 2011 website: http://gsoc2011.esug.org, and don’t forget to ensure you’re aware of the GSOC timeline.