The Weekly Squeak

Author: gcorriga

  • self vs. super

    On the Beginners mailing list, Lukas Renggli explains the difference between self and super. This is nothing esoteric, but it’s always useful for a beginner.

  • An optimization example

    In a recent discussion on the Squeak-dev mailing list, a Squeak implementation of the Sieve of Eratosthenes was compared with a Java implementation.

    Andres Vallous took the original code submitted to the list and produced an optimized version of it. His message to Squeak-dev details the step of this optimization.

    Together with Andreas Raab’s MessageTally tutorial, this example is a good guide on how to profile and optimize an algorithm written in Smalltalk

  • Recent package releases and announcements

    Here’s a list of the releases recently announced on the Squeak-dev mailing list:

    • Michael van der Gulik announced MessageCapture, a wrapper class that allows interception of all the messages sent to an object instance.
    • Keith Hodges has created an installer system which allows a developer to create scripts to automagically install a set of packages from SqueakMap and Squeaksource.
    • Keith has also resurrected an implementation of the Null pattern, that allows avoiding using many #ifNil or #notNil sends.
    • Edgar J. De Cleene announced ZurgleRemake, a porting to current Squeak versions of the old Zurgle UI-skinning and native-widgets-emulation engine.
    • Edgar also announced availability of a new version of his SqueakLight reduced-size image
    • Pavel Krivanek has released a new version of the shrinking script that he uses to create his Kernel images.

    The following releases were announced on the Seaside mailing list:

    • Philippe Marshall has created Seaside bindings for ProtoGrowl, a Prototype-based JavaScript tool that integrates with the Growl notification system for Mac OS X.
    • Keith Hodges has produced a sample script for his Installer system that automatically installs Seaside, Magma and Pier on a basic Squeak image.
    • John M. McIntosh has published a now Mac carbon VM that may run in headless mode.

    A couple of announcements have also been sent to Squeak-dev:

  • Call for release team volunteers

    The Squeak Foundation board has issued a call for volunteers to create a release team to guide the development of the next version of Squeak, following the guidelines set up during the last board meeting.

    The board is
    […] looking for people who have available time, the diligence to complete a release, and a good degree of mutual trust with the community. If you’d like to volunteer, please do so here! If you have someone else in mind, please contact them privately and encourage them to volunteer.

  • Squeak Foundation Board meeting notes – October 18th, 2006

    Craig Latta posted the notes of the Squeak Foundation Board meeting that occured on October 4th. The Squeak Foundation Board meets twice a month via IM on the first and third wednesday, and Craig has been appointed to speak for the board.

    During yesterday’s meeting the following items were discussed:

    1. Squeak License: Yoshiki Ohshima mentioned that Viewpoints plans to contact a lawyer, produce a template of the new Apache-style license agreement that OLPC will use, work with the board to complete the Squeak contributor list, and act as keepers of the license agreement.
    2. Squeak 3.10: The board decided to appoint a release team for Squeak 3.10 development. The team will consist of three persons who will act mainly as integrators and avoid direct development. They can still contribute to the development effort, but such contributions will be outside the scope of the release team’s mission. They will also act as coordinators in order to solve possible conflicting contributions.
    3. Georgia Tech’s Squeak wiki: since Georgia Tech plans the retirement of the current swiki server, the Squeak wiki contents will have to be migrated to a community managed server. The board discussed possible line of actions.

    The board welcomes suggestions on possible agenda items for their meetings.

  • Squeak: toy or instrument?

    A message by Giuseppe Luigi Punzi sparked an interesting “philosophical” discussion on the nature of Squeak.

    Giuseppe remarks that for many developers who work with other languages, Squeak looks like a children toy with no serious applications built with it.

    To this Matthew Fulmer replied:

    Squeak is a toy. That is a good thing.

    Squeak is a toy, and therefore it looks like a toy. Aversion to
    toys is (in my not-so-humble opinion) the worst thing that is
    taught to programmers (adults?) today. Playing is the only way
    to make new ideas. One must enjoy playing before they can
    understand the purpose of Squeak. Until they realize “Squeak is
    a Toy, and I am OK with that”, they are missing the point. A
    clean object memory, simple syntax, and easy debugging are just
    implementation issues. The point of Squeak is to have fun
    building; after that, everything else falls into place.

    .

    This caused a follow up by Alan Kay, that wrote:

    The “other” kind of thing that “can be played with” is an
    “instrument” (musical, wood or metal shaping, etc.). Instruments are
    partly “mess around toys” and partly “serious toys”. And Art enters
    in when one starts to play on an instrument and around with an
    instrument. Dan and I had this in mind when we designed and built Smalltalk.

    Other Squeakers, both old and new, gave their contribution to the discussion.

    So, what do you think?

  • Process Woes

    Since the beginning of the month there’s been a recurring theme on the squeak-dev mailing list regarding Squeak’s development process.
    The discussions started with a message from Goran Krampe about the evolution of Squeak’s development process and how to have a more community-oriented process. Many squeakers replied to this message; this response from Ken Causey is just one of the many.
    More recently, Stephane Ducasse published a possible feature roadmap for Squeak 3.10/4.0 (with comments by Andreas Raab), while Giovanni Corriga sent a proposal for a 3.10 developement process.

  • Squeak 3.9 RC2

    Stephane Ducasse announced the availability of the second Release Candidate of Squeak 3.9. According to his message to the squeak-dev mailing list, there’s still one more bug to fix before the final 3.9 release.

  • 200,000 dowloads for Seaside

    Stephane Ducasse notes that Seaside downloads on SqueakSource have crossed the 200,000 downloads threshold. Rick Flower adds that this figure does not include the downloads of the VisualWorks port of Seaside, which is hosted on the Cincom public repository.

  • Squeaksource.com down on Friday

    Marcus Denker announced that due to a planned power outage, the Squeaksource server will be down from 4:00 pm GMT to 7:00 pm GMT.