10 ms·

Squeak 5 is out

172 points by Fice 11y ago

asb 11y ago
"Spur is just a stepping stone to a more ambitious goals planned over the next five years." Does anybody know of a document describing these goals?
- lmz 11y ago
  These ones maybe: http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/cog-projects/ http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/cog-projects/ (linked from the Release Notes: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6207 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6207 )
  - gecko 11y ago
    And just to give the quick summary, Spur enables: * More immediate types. The classic Squeak/Pharo image type only allows for objects, strings, and integers as immediates, if I recall correctly. Spur adds individual characters, floats (soon), and some other stuff I'm spacing. Since all Smalltalk values are nominally heap-based, having more immediates is a really big deal. * Allows for a segmented heap. For desktop apps, this isn't a big deal, but for server apps, it means that the VM can actually relinquish RAM. * Better object pinning, which makes FFI a lot easier. * A more GC-friendly design, that should enable a much faster GC pass. The only downside, IIRC, is that the total image size grows by about 15%, but that's a pretty good trade-off, given a normal image is usually in the tens of megabytes.
    - needusername 11y ago
      Threaded FFI has been on that list for a long, long time as well.
olsonjeffery 11y ago
I so often realize, when I look at my efforts in my own recreational programming, that I want to recreate and recapture the joy of working in smalltalk (which I've only ever done recreationally w/ Squeak/Pharo). Just with tools/APIs that I'm more comfortable with in my day-to-day programming. Also lisp.
- stijlist 11y ago
  If you'd like to see an attempt at the best of both worlds (Smalltalk and Lisp), check out Robert Krahn's work on Cloxp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQvvgzvPgQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQvvgzvPgQI
gmartres 11y ago
What's the relationship between Squeak and Pharo? Do they have the same goals?
- Tomte 11y ago
  Pharo forked off from Squeak.
- radiowave 11y ago
  Pharo is a fork of Squeak, loosely along the lines of "let's rip out and replace as much old cruft as we can" vs. "let's maintain backwards compatibility where reasonably possible", respectively. The big news here, however, is the new VM and image format, and since Pharo and Squeak have never diverged in that area, it's likely that Pharo will benefit from these improvements as well.
  - gecko 11y ago
    It will indeed. The current plan (subject to change) is that Pharo 5 will ship as Pharo 4 + Spur (32 bit), then Pharo 5.1 will be Pharo 4 + Spur (64 bit), and then normal releases will resume. But as I said, that's just the current plan, and so much has landed on the 5.0 branch already that I'm a bit dubious they'll stick to that.
    - needusername 11y ago
      Isn't NativeBoost what's currently blocking the migration to Spur?
aw3c2 11y ago
What is it?
- a3n 11y ago
  s|news.squeak.org/2015/08/12/squeak-5-is-out/|squeak.org|
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I should try out version 5. After many years of using Squeak I jumped to the fork Pharo for reasons I now forget. I blogged many years ago that if/when I retired I might mostly only use Squeak for the rest of my life for learning/hacking projects. I have largely used Lisp languages since the early 1980s, but the Smalltalk environment is so much fun! Congrats to the Squeak team.
- Johnny_Brahms 11y ago
  With Lisp (mostly ironscheme, guile and racket for me) and smalltalk, I have this feeling that just about every other language has been playing catch-up. It is just recently that some scripting languages have started giving me the same feeling of bliss.
  - klibertp 11y ago
    Which ones?
    - eggy 11y ago
      For one, operating on the running system and seeing immediate changes. I started in 1979 with a Commodore PET 2001, and although limited and not comparable to say a Lisp Machine (envy), it made me feel like I was the 'owner' and could jump into BASIC and program away at the resources in the machine - POKE, PEEK. I guess this gives new meaning to 'poking around' :)
      - klibertp 11y ago
        Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I was asking which modern scripting languages do you think are the closest to interactive Lisp and Smalltalk environments. I'm way too young to remember "the real thing", but I know Pharo a bit (Squeak fork) and recently I started using StumpWM, which is a window manager written in Common Lisp. In the latter case I'm practically living inside slime-repl. The point being that I know quite a bit modern, scripting languages (Python, Ruby, JavaScript, TCL, Io, Lua, ...) and a couple more experimental, dynamic languages and still, none of them "give me the same feeling of bliss". They're getting closer, but are not quite there yet. So I was just curious which scripting languages the GP had in mind.
agentgt 11y ago
I'm just curious how people share projects with modern Squeak these days. I learned Squeak at GaTech and while I some what appreciated the language I really hated Squeaks tools and development style (basically monkey patching and sending big changesets and by god I want to use emacs not Squeaks Mattel/Fisher price kids editor... I'm sure its better now). Sadly Squeak was the start of my slow and gradual hate of OOP languages (Java later on did not help) but it did have some really cool things like traits and continuations.
- cwp 11y ago
  These days Squeak uses Monticello, which is a modern DVCS.
- jcromartie 11y ago
  Pharo is an effort to make a "grown-up" Squeak. It's hard to get the kind of interaction that makes Smalltalk work when you're inside a general-purpose text editor. When I'm working in Smalltalk, even though it's always a "toy" program, I feel like I'm sort of reaching into the computer's inner world and fiddling with things in a way you can't do with a plain old text editor.
  - wtbob 11y ago
    > When I'm working in Smalltalk, even though it's always a "toy" program, I feel like I'm sort of reaching into the computer's inner world and fiddling with things in a way you can't do with a plain old text editor. There's always http://dmitrymatveev.co.uk/shampoo/ http://dmitrymatveev.co.uk/shampoo/
  - a3n 11y ago
    > I feel like I'm sort of reaching into the computer's inner world and fiddling with things That's what I didn't like when I was playing with smalltalk in school (in '87)
- daveloyall 11y ago
  Development Tools Overview (Monticello, SqueakSource, SqueakMap) http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5878 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5878
senorcastro 11y ago
Will it run seaside?
- st-enthusiast 11y ago
  It should. There is even an install script for it. But I believe the development shifted to Pharo as the primary platform.
fake-name 11y ago
> a new segmented heap allows memory to be given back to the OS when its no longer needed, a great benefit for application servers. Application servers? Is anyone writing servers in squeak?
- st-enthusiast 11y ago
  The people interested in that sort of thing left for Pharo long ago. The Pharo platform seems much more practically-minded, and the website has some case studies of businesses built using it: http://pharo.org/success http://pharo.org/success
  - small-talking 11y ago
    What makes you think no one is using Squeak as an application server?
st-enthusiast 11y ago
I remember Squeak used to have a bunch of different window colors for different tools, which always made Squeak look like a toy unfit for serious work. I downloaded the latest, and now there seems to be uniformity in the UI, with a single window style for all tools. It looks like Pharo has pushed them in the right direction.
pjmlp 11y ago
Congratulations to the team. I learned Smalltalk with Visual Works back in 1995, it was a great experience.

172 points by Fice 11y ago

asb 11y ago

"Spur is just a stepping stone to a more ambitious goals planned over the next five years." Does anybody know of a document describing these goals?

lmz 11y ago
These ones maybe: http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/cog-projects/ http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/cog-projects/ (linked from the Release Notes: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6207 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6207 )
- gecko 11y ago
  And just to give the quick summary, Spur enables: * More immediate types. The classic Squeak/Pharo image type only allows for objects, strings, and integers as immediates, if I recall correctly. Spur adds individual characters, floats (soon), and some other stuff I'm spacing. Since all Smalltalk values are nominally heap-based, having more immediates is a really big deal. * Allows for a segmented heap. For desktop apps, this isn't a big deal, but for server apps, it means that the VM can actually relinquish RAM. * Better object pinning, which makes FFI a lot easier. * A more GC-friendly design, that should enable a much faster GC pass. The only downside, IIRC, is that the total image size grows by about 15%, but that's a pretty good trade-off, given a normal image is usually in the tens of megabytes.
  - needusername 11y ago
    Threaded FFI has been on that list for a long, long time as well.

olsonjeffery 11y ago

I so often realize, when I look at my efforts in my own recreational programming, that I want to recreate and recapture the joy of working in smalltalk (which I've only ever done recreationally w/ Squeak/Pharo). Just with tools/APIs that I'm more comfortable with in my day-to-day programming. Also lisp.

stijlist 11y ago
If you'd like to see an attempt at the best of both worlds (Smalltalk and Lisp), check out Robert Krahn's work on Cloxp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQvvgzvPgQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQvvgzvPgQI

gmartres 11y ago

What's the relationship between Squeak and Pharo? Do they have the same goals?

Tomte 11y ago
Pharo forked off from Squeak.
radiowave 11y ago
Pharo is a fork of Squeak, loosely along the lines of "let's rip out and replace as much old cruft as we can" vs. "let's maintain backwards compatibility where reasonably possible", respectively. The big news here, however, is the new VM and image format, and since Pharo and Squeak have never diverged in that area, it's likely that Pharo will benefit from these improvements as well.
- gecko 11y ago
  It will indeed. The current plan (subject to change) is that Pharo 5 will ship as Pharo 4 + Spur (32 bit), then Pharo 5.1 will be Pharo 4 + Spur (64 bit), and then normal releases will resume. But as I said, that's just the current plan, and so much has landed on the 5.0 branch already that I'm a bit dubious they'll stick to that.
  - needusername 11y ago
    Isn't NativeBoost what's currently blocking the migration to Spur?

aw3c2 11y ago

What is it?

a3n 11y ago
s|news.squeak.org/2015/08/12/squeak-5-is-out/|squeak.org|

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I should try out version 5. After many years of using Squeak I jumped to the fork Pharo for reasons I now forget. I blogged many years ago that if/when I retired I might mostly only use Squeak for the rest of my life for learning/hacking projects. I have largely used Lisp languages since the early 1980s, but the Smalltalk environment is so much fun! Congrats to the Squeak team.

Johnny_Brahms 11y ago
With Lisp (mostly ironscheme, guile and racket for me) and smalltalk, I have this feeling that just about every other language has been playing catch-up. It is just recently that some scripting languages have started giving me the same feeling of bliss.
- klibertp 11y ago
  Which ones?
  - eggy 11y ago
    For one, operating on the running system and seeing immediate changes. I started in 1979 with a Commodore PET 2001, and although limited and not comparable to say a Lisp Machine (envy), it made me feel like I was the 'owner' and could jump into BASIC and program away at the resources in the machine - POKE, PEEK. I guess this gives new meaning to 'poking around' :)
    - klibertp 11y ago
      Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I was asking which modern scripting languages do you think are the closest to interactive Lisp and Smalltalk environments. I'm way too young to remember "the real thing", but I know Pharo a bit (Squeak fork) and recently I started using StumpWM, which is a window manager written in Common Lisp. In the latter case I'm practically living inside slime-repl. The point being that I know quite a bit modern, scripting languages (Python, Ruby, JavaScript, TCL, Io, Lua, ...) and a couple more experimental, dynamic languages and still, none of them "give me the same feeling of bliss". They're getting closer, but are not quite there yet. So I was just curious which scripting languages the GP had in mind.

agentgt 11y ago

I'm just curious how people share projects with modern Squeak these days. I learned Squeak at GaTech and while I some what appreciated the language I really hated Squeaks tools and development style (basically monkey patching and sending big changesets and by god I want to use emacs not Squeaks Mattel/Fisher price kids editor... I'm sure its better now). Sadly Squeak was the start of my slow and gradual hate of OOP languages (Java later on did not help) but it did have some really cool things like traits and continuations.

cwp 11y ago
These days Squeak uses Monticello, which is a modern DVCS.
jcromartie 11y ago
Pharo is an effort to make a "grown-up" Squeak. It's hard to get the kind of interaction that makes Smalltalk work when you're inside a general-purpose text editor. When I'm working in Smalltalk, even though it's always a "toy" program, I feel like I'm sort of reaching into the computer's inner world and fiddling with things in a way you can't do with a plain old text editor.
- wtbob 11y ago
  > When I'm working in Smalltalk, even though it's always a "toy" program, I feel like I'm sort of reaching into the computer's inner world and fiddling with things in a way you can't do with a plain old text editor. There's always http://dmitrymatveev.co.uk/shampoo/ http://dmitrymatveev.co.uk/shampoo/
- a3n 11y ago
  > I feel like I'm sort of reaching into the computer's inner world and fiddling with things That's what I didn't like when I was playing with smalltalk in school (in '87)
daveloyall 11y ago
Development Tools Overview (Monticello, SqueakSource, SqueakMap) http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5878 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5878

senorcastro 11y ago

Will it run seaside?

st-enthusiast 11y ago
It should. There is even an install script for it. But I believe the development shifted to Pharo as the primary platform.

fake-name 11y ago

> a new segmented heap allows memory to be given back to the OS when its no longer needed, a great benefit for application servers. Application servers? Is anyone writing servers in squeak?

st-enthusiast 11y ago
The people interested in that sort of thing left for Pharo long ago. The Pharo platform seems much more practically-minded, and the website has some case studies of businesses built using it: http://pharo.org/success http://pharo.org/success
- small-talking 11y ago
  What makes you think no one is using Squeak as an application server?

st-enthusiast 11y ago

I remember Squeak used to have a bunch of different window colors for different tools, which always made Squeak look like a toy unfit for serious work. I downloaded the latest, and now there seems to be uniformity in the UI, with a single window style for all tools. It looks like Pharo has pushed them in the right direction.

pjmlp 11y ago

Congratulations to the team. I learned Smalltalk with Visual Works back in 1995, it was a great experience.