On Learning Smalltalk

Re:On Learning Smalltalk by rbanffy on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @03:17PM (#29897217)

At that point I doubt it. I was expecting that answer in fact. Smalltalk had a couple problems Java didn’t. Its syntax scared people used to C while Java made them feel comfortable. The tooling was also free, which was not the case for Smalltalk at the time. Finally, the idea of storing source code inside a memory image didn’t help with interoperability (something I also observed while working with Zope).

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Re:On Learning Smalltalk by igouy on Tuesday January 18, 2022 @11:52AM (#29981894)

> … storing source code inside a memory image didn’t help with interoperability…

Here's some "play well with others” "interoperability" —

Sept 21, 1987 — "A version of the Smalltalk-80 object-oriented development environment … has been announced by Parcplace Systems.

Smalltalk-80 DE version 2.2 is said to provide Unix environments with interprocess communication via sockets and access to Unix C shells. On the Apple Macintosh, it provides access to Desk Accessories and provides the ability to cut and paste between the Smalltalk-80 system and the clipboard."

https://books.google.com/books?id=ldk7z4Q-WWYC&pg=RA4-PA4&lp...

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Re:On Learning Smalltalk by igouy on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @06:11PM (#29899768)

"The Rise and Fall of Commercial Smalltalk" discussions provide a fuller picture:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29223880

> … storing source code inside a memory image didn’t help with interoperability…

"Interoperability" covers a lot of things, was there something particular you had in mind?

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Re:On Learning Smalltalk by rbanffy on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @06:18PM (#29899862)

In this case it was about being adaptable to the tools programmers already used. Smalltalk required one to buy into the whole thing - it’s an IDE with its own OS and GUI.

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Re:On Learning Smalltalk by igouy on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @08:03PM (#29900938)

What if those already-used tools weren't as-good for writing Smalltalk programs?

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> … its own OS and GUI.

Well there are examples of bare metal Smalltalk (I'm guessing we could say the same of Java?)

    https://github.com/michaelengel/crosstalk

but that was kind-of unusual and afaik commercial Smalltalk implementations targeted specific host OSes.

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Similarly back in the '80s commercial Smalltalk implementations provided their own GUI L&F (and in the '90s Java provided their CrossPlatformLookAndFeel aka Metal).

When OS GUIs became available in the '80s, Smalltalk implementations either targeted specific host OS GUIs (so on MS Win use MS Win controls) or provided portable GUIs based on emulated L&Fs (OS/2, Motif, MacOS, MSWin) (and in the '90s Java provided AWT/Swing…).

IBM Smalltalk (Visual Age) GUIs were based on what would become in the '90s Java SWT.

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So no, not really "its own OS and GUI" — when GUIs became provided by the host OS, Smalltalk implementations provided ways to use the platform L&F.

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