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Welcome to Smalltalk.org.
ANSI Smalltalk Standard Group ANNOUNCEMENT
Written by Bruce Badger in a posting to comp.lang.smalltalk Fellow Smalltalkers, I have had a conference call with representatives of INCITS and it seems that getting the process restarted to revise the ANSI standard for Smalltalk is very doable. The first step is to submit a proposal for the project of working on the Smalltalk standard. If the proposal is successful the outcome will be some form of committee which we must then populate and put to work. Full Article...
Planet Smalltalk Blog Headlines
[Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants] Seaside in Dallas
Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants - Smalltalk by James Robertson
January 07, 2009 04:12 AM
Chinese teachers better at foundational maths than US teachers
Bill Kerr by Bill Kerr
January 07, 2009 12:21 AM
Materially Objective
Howard Stearns' Inventing the Future by Howard Stearns
January 06, 2009 06:20 AM
[Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants] Contingency Plans
Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants - Smalltalk by James Robertson
January 06, 2009 03:59 AM
[Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants] Smalltalk in Dallas
Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants - Smalltalk by James Robertson
January 05, 2009 10:23 PM
Cloudfork AWS packages and some rough edges
Smalltalk in The Cloud by Jan van de Sandt
January 05, 2009 08:36 PM
Blog headlines provided by Planet Smalltalk
Blog Headlines
Last updated: January 07, 2009 11:04 AM UTC CONTINUOUS NUISANCE DOUBLE TYPE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE TAX
Written by Peter William Lount, [ | peter at smalltalk dot org ]. A "DOUBLE TYPE TAX" is a perfect way to describe any language that forces the user or programmer to "type" as in typing characters the "type" specification of every variable. How tedious typing type information is, and it's only of limited use. Anytime type information is really needed in a program it can be checked at runtime with minimal or insignificant cost. In fact many programs ultimately run faster with type-less languages, aka dynamic languages, such as Smalltalk. This is because many programs tend to be disk bound or thrash the cache anyhow, and significantly because of the poor implementations of class libraries in languages that force type specifications upon poor unsuspecting programmers who don't know any better or who don't want to change and adapt to a world of programming free of type specifications on variables, parameters, etc... By virtue of their success dynamic typeless languages are valid programming models which drives type-focused programming types crazy. All type checking is simply redundant at compile time. It's effectively useless except for detecting a few categories of errors and for a few optimizations. Languages with types are effectively not any higher level than C or Assembly language. What especially drives "type fiends" nuts is that there are those of us who recognize that dynamic languages are far superior to typed language programming paradigms. We rain on their parade. Types have their purpose but it's very limited and should be banned from programming languages for the most part. The main difference between a type and an untyped language is that in untyped language, say Smalltalk for example, the so called "type" information is attached to the object itself and not to the variable/parameter slot. This allows tremendous flexibility and most importantly FREEDOM from the DOUBLE TYPE TAX. Full Article...
Learning to Talk: Introduction to Talking
Written by Jeffrey Massung My first exposure to Smalltalk was around 2001. It was using Smalltalk MT, and I created a simple raytracer with it (that was the typical pet project I did with all new languages at the time). It turned out reasonably well. I didn't really understand much about Smalltalk at the time other than the syntax and how to move around the environment. Once I did enough to feel that I had a "reasonable understanding" of the language, I put it down and moved onto other things.... First, let me say that the boys (Andy Bower and Blair McGlashan) at Object Arts did an absolutely fantastic job with their presentation of the language. All implementations I'd seen to-date were either very foreign (Squeak) or extremely "old" (ObjectStudio, MT). This not only looked and felt modern, it actually had all the features a professional programmer expects from a development environment: syntax highlighting, view composing, source control (built in), tutorials, and more, all presented very elegantly. Andy and Blair really took their time and got it right! Full Article...
2006 OOPSLA Conference
posted by Peter William Lount 
Full Article...
2006 Smalltalk Solutions Conference
posted by Peter William Lount
The Smalltalk Solutions Conference is the premier forum for bringing together Smalltalk users, developers, and enthusiasts. This year's conference will take place April 24th through 26th in fun-filled Toronto, Ontario, Canada in conjunction with the LinuxWorld and NetworkWorld conference & expo at the the Metro Toronto Convention Center.
Full Article
The Essence of Smalltalk
Smalltalk and it’s usage in Microsoft’s .Net Written by Aditya Dutt
Bytecode-to-bytecode adaptive optimization for Smalltalk
Submitted by Scott Bleackley Edited by Peter William Lount
"Smalltalk is a vision of the computer as a medium of self expression. ... A humanistic vision of the computer as something everyone could use and benefit from. If you are going to have a medium for self expression, programability is key because unless you can actually make the system behave as you want you are a slave to what's on the machine. So it's really vital, and so language comes to the for because it's through language that you express yourself to the machine." - Elliot Miranda Full Article...
Dynamic Runtime Type-Object-Class Inference
By Peter William Lount Run time type inference is a technique that has long been applied to dynamic programs to recover the type information while the program is running. It was experimented with at Xerox Parc. It is known that Dynamic Type Inference "recovers" type information - well recovers is not really the most accurate term, maybe "discovers" is better - and that the information may have additional uses. For example, the Self system uses this runtime "type/class" information of the prototypical objects to customize and recompile methods under the covers and on the fly which enables some performance optimizations. Other uses are certainly possible such as using the information for Refactoring. Full Article...
Exploring Type Safety in Smalltalk
By Peter William Lount Something magical happens when "manifest" type information is left out of programs. Smalltalk is an excellent example of this magic. While adding type information has it's benefits it also alters the shape of how you build programs. As there are somethings that can be done with "manifest typed" programs that can't be done with dynamic programs, the reverse is also especially true: untyped, non-typed, or dynamic programs have special capabilities that typed systems don't have. It's very interesting that a line in the sand between typed and dynamic systems exists, very interesting indeed. How do we know this line exists? The evidence is simple and based upon facts, Smalltalk exists and works well - very well - without the need for types. In addition when types are added to Smalltalk the way that you program changes, limits are now placed upon variables, parameters, and return values that alter the "shape", "nature", and "style" of code writing. These changes have a huge impact upon the flexibility, terseness and other advantages that Smalltalk has to offer. Full Article...
Dynamic Systems are where Capability Rules
"Isn't the Meijer/Drayton paper
trying to bridge the divide by pragmatically adopting
what form of type checking is necessary at
any given point instead of taking absolutist positions?" - Dilip asked.
Ah NO! What gave you that idea? Their paper has very little to actually say about dynamic typing. Essentially it rants about the authors desired "type" straight jackets and does little if nothing to bridge the "gap" between these very different styles of programming languages. Full Article...
Moving Forward Towards The Right Kind of More Less
Michael Lucas-Smith writes:
"I firmly believe in "less is more", so long as it's the right kind of less.
There are lots of languages out there that declare types for instance variables.
Smalltalk doesn't - but it does make you declare instance variables.
This, I think, is a bad thing. It means that the shape of a class must be "overridden"
if you want to "extend" it to do more jobs. So my first change to Smalltalk would be to
remove instance variable declaration."
Full Article...
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