The Weekly Squeak

Category: Smalltalk

  • Croquet Edit and Create 3d Objects

    Howard Stearns recently replied to a question from Mathieu. I thought I’d reproduce his response here. Howard gives a lot of very good information about Croquet support for third party tools….

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  • Sun Rise or Sun Set?

    SunRiseOrSet

    Was Sun deciding between using Smalltalk and writing Java? This question was reciently raised on Squeak-Dev. Eric Clayburg, V.P. of Development at ParcPlace-Digitalk in 1996, recalls discussions from that time.

    This discussion raises many questions about what might have been. The real question is where is Smalltalk going. I will be writing a few articles on this subject comming up trying to answer the question: Is the sun rising or setting on Smalltalk?

    Ron Teitelbaum
    President / Principal Software Engineer
    US Medical Record Specialists
    Ron@USMedRec.com

  • Creating SqueakSource

    SqueakSource

    SqueakSource is a web based repository for versioning and storing Squeak code. The subject of creating a squeakSource image came up on the beginners list.

    Franz Josef Konrad posted a very nice “how to create your own SqueakSource image” response. By running your own squeakSource you can share code with other developers or use it just to keep track of your own stuff. Here are the steps to create a squeakSource image:

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  • Magma Interview with Chris Muller

    magma.jpg

    ODBMSJournal did a nice interview with Chris Muller about Magma. Magma is an object database writtne entirely in Smalltalk. Chris discusses smalltalk in general and IDE’s both closed and open source. He also discusses aspects of Magma including commiting and setup, queries, standard SQL support for reporting tools through ODBC, reporting, Morphic persistence, performance optimizations and his expierences in developing Magma.

    Thank you Steve Moffitt for pointing out the interview.

  • Bern Smalltalk party writeup

    Klaus D. Witzel sent us a report on last Saturday’s Smalltalk Party in Bern, that we are happy to publish. Thanks, Klaus!

    Last Saturday two dozen Smalltalkers enjoyed a very successfull Smalltalk Party in Bern. We received presentations and life demos in VW, Dolphin and Squeak, from authors and users of

    There was plenty of time between the presentations for breakout sessions during which newbies, users and authors happily hacked together and discussed new developments and burning questions.

    The party culminated at the Tramdepot Brewery and Restaurant, downtown in Bern, where the Smalltalkers “almost” chilled out and enjoyed a recreating meal and tasteful drinks.

    Our deep thanks go to the executive organizer Marcus Denker; to SSUG, sponsor of snacks and drinks; and to SCG, who set up this wonderful meeting and generously provided facilities.

  • Strongtalk VM for RUBY?

    Many of you are following the latest developments in VM technology.  The Strongtalk VM was release as open source by SUN.  There is some discussion about using the Strongtalk VM for Ruby.  Will Ruby be the first language to benefit from Strongtalk’s Type Feedback optimizations?  Will the VM developers in the Smalltalk community step up to help Strongtalk?  While a path is being forged it would be nice if we could steer it back towards support for Squeak.  Please join the discussion at: http://groups.google.com/group/strongtalk-general

  • Dynamic messages: a tour of Pepsi

    Ian Piumarta is already known for the efforts on the Unix port of Squeak.
    The last Ian work is Pepsi, a dynamic-compiled language which is promising very well.

    Weekly Squeak has just done some questions to him, and a deep analysis ofPepsi.

    Giorgi:What are exactly Id and Pepsi?

    Piumarta: ‘Id‘ is an object model. It’s the simplest possible model that
    permits an object to receive a message without introducing any early bound assumptions in the mechanisms.
    ‘Pepsi‘ is a generic name for the universe of simple object models and
    languages that can be built directly on top of Id.
    These exist mainly to provide a message-oriented foundation for making object structures in.

    ‘Idst‘ is a Smalltalk-like syntax (and object library) built on Id using
    prototypes rather than [meta]classes. The runtime is entirely
    dynamic but the code compiles to a static (native) executable.

    And now the code!

    I have downloaded the code found in http://piumarta.com/pepsi/

    The source pack has a lot of example.
    With Pepsi, Ian rewrote a pice of Smalltalk library using a prototype-based approach (like Self or IoLanguage).

    There are a lot of concepts, and this article is not going to explore them all.

    These are the major point in my own opinion:

    1. Id provide a compiled executable with dynamic message sending and a Garbage Collector.
      Id is based on Self, and it is able to create “slot” for objects and to attach methods to them.
    2. You can mix C-code and “Id” code in a very simple way. So it is easy to integrate with O.S. services. The idea is quite the opposite of Objective-C: you think in terms of objects all the time (as in SmallTalk).
      Then you “come back” to C-Language for the dirty part of your work.
      I have done some basic stuff using the Java Native Interface (JNI) and the “id compiler” seems to me simpler to use.
    3. Very very very flexible.

    You can find more interesting example like:

    • A port of the Squeak Virtual Machine (sqvm). The VM is able to interpret a “mini” squeak image even if is not very fast.
    • An X11 Integration example
    • Some more complex examples based on Jolt, an implementation of Coke.

    The id compiler (idc) works well under cygwin too, so it seems to me quite independent from the O.S. and the available libraries.

    This approach is far more promising then the interpreted one out of there; more notably, FScript is very nice, but is interpreted and limited to a Cocoa implementation.
    Id instead is still a bit slow, but you can tune it where you need using a snippet of C-code.

    About Giovanni Giorgi
    Born in the 1974, he is working as a professional IT Software Architect from year 2000.
    In the free time he likes doing trip and reading books.
    His blog has some interesting photo about his trips and he uses Smalltalk from 1996

  • Common Smalltalk VM Summit

    David Griswold, one of main developers of the Strongtalk system, writes:

    Hi everybody,

    Dan Ingalls and I have been talking, trying to figure out what to do about the major opportunity offered by the recent release of the Strongtalk virtual machine as open source.

    Rather than keep this discussion to ourselves, our thinking was that this would be the perfect time to call a kind of summit, with representatives of all the major Smalltalk implementations, both open-source and commercial.
    The topic: what if we could build a shared high-performance open-source platform suitable for hosting a number of different Smalltalk systems, one that we can all share and work on together?

    While the details of the type-feedback techniques used in the Strongtalk VM are arcane, the benefits are not: *much* higher performance for general Smalltalk code. Dan, myself, and many others who know about type-feedback and the pioneering Self system, have been dreaming for many years about the possibility that someday this technology might make it into mainstream Smalltalk VMs. It would take Smalltalk performance to a whole new level.

    That someday is here now, if the different factions within the Smalltalk community can pull together a little bit so that we don’t miss this opportunity.

    There may be debate within the community about some aspects of the Strongtalk project, for example the type system, but we should all be able to agree on the simple idea that a whole lot more performance would be a Good Thing. Now a huge performance gift has suddenly shown up on our doorstep.

    The last thing Smalltalk needs is another incompatible implementation. The splintering of Smalltalk implementations has dispersed the huge amount of talent and effort needed to build, port, maintain, and extend a really good virtual-machine. Alone, this is a problem for each of us. Together, a really good, super-fast type-feedback VM is for the first time within reach.

    I would like to invite the smart people out there who know and care most about the various Smalltalk virtual machines, to join Dan and I in a fairly focused discussion about this starting tomorrow (Thursday, PST) [editor’s note: this message was sent on Wednesday, 4th October] on the Strongtalk discussion group, at http://groups.google.com/group/strongtalk-general. I will be out of the country for 6 weeks starting Wed the 11th, so I would like to propose that we try to go back and forth about this a few times by the end of Friday, so we can think about this over the weekend, and maybe come up with a proposed general course of action by the middle of next week, so we all have something to think about until my return.

    Let’s not lose this opportunity.

    Cheers,
    Dave

  • Upcoming Smalltalk Events – US

    Here’s a list of the upcoming Smalltalk Events in US. Please follow the links for more information.

    NYC Smalltalk Meeting
    Wednesday, 18th October – 6:30pm
    440 W. 9th Ave, Fl 8, New York City.

  • Upcoming Smalltalk Events – Europe

    Here’s a list of the upcoming Smalltalk Events in Europe. Please follow the links for more information.

    UK Smalltalk meeting
    Friday 20th October – 5.30pm
    JPMorgan offices, London

    Camp Smalltalk
    Saturday 21st October – 11am
    JPMorgan offices, London

    Bern Smalltalk Party
    Saturday 28th October – 9:30am
    Software Composition Group, Bern

    Paris Smalltalk Party
    Saturday 25th November – from 9am to 6pm
    INJS Paris.