8 ms·

Amber Smalltalk

87 points by dkarapetyan 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
vimota 10y ago
Code sample on the homepage please!
- kencausey 10y ago
  Click on the Try Amber button and freely look at all of the code.
  - PudgePacket 10y ago
    Clicking it does nothing.
    - kencausey 10y ago
      Are you blocking Javascript or anything? See the bottom third of this screenshot for what I expect you to see: https://s3.amazonaws.com/klcother/ambersmalltalk.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/klcother/ambersmalltalk.png
      - PudgePacket 10y ago
        Oh hey it worked this time. Perhaps I didn't give it enough time to load before.
        robotnoises 10y ago
        I had a similar experience. It worked the second time I clicked.
sriku 10y ago
Relatively little work on it in a long time. I think to bring smalltalk into the web world takes a different kind of think than a straight port to Js. The dev environment needs to seamlessly cover backend and frontend and be live editable. That would also need protections. Few of this has been accomplished to date. Good project for an undergraduate Cs degree student I guess.
- fniephaus 10y ago
  Here are two other approaches: https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/lively4-core/start.html https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/lively4-core/start.html https://squeak.js.org/demo/simple.html#fullscreen https://squeak.js.org/demo/simple.html#fullscreen
  - warent 10y ago
    "lively-kernel wants to permanently store large data on your device. Continue?" Pardon?
  - sriku 10y ago
    Neither of these do justice to the paradigm introduced by smalltalk. Both cases are lifting the least significant aspect of smalltalk - the single self-contained VM - and making it available within a browser. This is far from acceptable from the perspective of developing systems today. It is an SPA in the extreme and you got to take care of the backend in some other way. What if the entire system is visible and editable live within a single IDE? - the "entire system" including everything that's running within clients of your service and everything that's running on all your scaled out servers .. and everything that's running in your "IDE". Without having to make it smalltalk, can we borrow this idea today and implement it in JS?
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Designing a reliable system which combines widely distributed computing and Smalltalk-style integration appears to be a significant CS research problem. In the short term, I can imagine a system which exposes a REPL from each backend instance and a websocket-driven REPL from each browser client, and ties them together in a unified interface that allows enumeration and provides convenient syntax for evaluation against multiple targets. Such a system might offer some interesting possibilities around realtime client and server hot-patching and problem investigation, if it could be made bulletproof enough not to also serve as a gigantic SPoF or security vulnerability. But I don't know if it's really similar to what you're thinking of.
philippeback 10y ago
Actually there is one more approach: https://pharojs.github.io/ https://pharojs.github.io/ Amber is interesting because of how it evolves and what it can do, like having real compiler producing JS as output. One can learn quite a bit by studying it. Tools have to be better and there are some limitations but still, an interesting experience.
philippnagel 10y ago
Reminds me of http://witheve.com http://witheve.com, similar intentions at least.
FrancoDiaz 10y ago
I'm not a big fan of the Smalltalk language, but I think Smalltalk's greatest contribution to development was putting forward the idea that development environments are important for productivity.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Actually, Lisp did that first (as did Emacs). But yes, ST popularized the idea (which is somewhat paradoxical, as, like Lisp, ST never actually caught on).
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    You have to thank Sun and Java for it. Enterprise was adopting Smalltalk when Java came out. Even Eclipse was actually Visual Age for Smalltalk refurbished.
    - zeveb 10y ago
      You're not wrong, but I read that as 'thank': had it not been for Sun & Java, then maybe — just maybe — the development industry would have advanced beyond the 1960s/early 1970s. Can you imagine if the standard language of enterprise development today were Smalltalk? Can you imagine if the standard language of the Web were Lisp (or Scheme)? Can you imagine if we'd sunk all the work into making Lisp & Smalltalk great that we instead sunk into making Java & JavaScript not so terrible that they cause spontaneous seppuku?
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Yes because I used Smalltalk and Oberon (influenced by Mesa/Cedar), and although not directly related RAD tooling like Delphi and C++ Builder. Which is why after my initial enchantment with UNIX, I grew tired of using a graphical workstation to manage xterms.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Amber Smalltalk

87 points by dkarapetyan 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

vimota 10y ago

Code sample on the homepage please!

kencausey 10y ago
Click on the Try Amber button and freely look at all of the code.
- PudgePacket 10y ago
  Clicking it does nothing.
  - kencausey 10y ago
    Are you blocking Javascript or anything? See the bottom third of this screenshot for what I expect you to see: https://s3.amazonaws.com/klcother/ambersmalltalk.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/klcother/ambersmalltalk.png
    - PudgePacket 10y ago
      Oh hey it worked this time. Perhaps I didn't give it enough time to load before.
      - robotnoises 10y ago
        I had a similar experience. It worked the second time I clicked.

sriku 10y ago

Relatively little work on it in a long time. I think to bring smalltalk into the web world takes a different kind of think than a straight port to Js. The dev environment needs to seamlessly cover backend and frontend and be live editable. That would also need protections. Few of this has been accomplished to date. Good project for an undergraduate Cs degree student I guess.

fniephaus 10y ago
Here are two other approaches: https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/lively4-core/start.html https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/lively4-core/start.html https://squeak.js.org/demo/simple.html#fullscreen https://squeak.js.org/demo/simple.html#fullscreen
- warent 10y ago
  "lively-kernel wants to permanently store large data on your device. Continue?" Pardon?
- sriku 10y ago
  Neither of these do justice to the paradigm introduced by smalltalk. Both cases are lifting the least significant aspect of smalltalk - the single self-contained VM - and making it available within a browser. This is far from acceptable from the perspective of developing systems today. It is an SPA in the extreme and you got to take care of the backend in some other way. What if the entire system is visible and editable live within a single IDE? - the "entire system" including everything that's running within clients of your service and everything that's running on all your scaled out servers .. and everything that's running in your "IDE". Without having to make it smalltalk, can we borrow this idea today and implement it in JS?
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Designing a reliable system which combines widely distributed computing and Smalltalk-style integration appears to be a significant CS research problem. In the short term, I can imagine a system which exposes a REPL from each backend instance and a websocket-driven REPL from each browser client, and ties them together in a unified interface that allows enumeration and provides convenient syntax for evaluation against multiple targets. Such a system might offer some interesting possibilities around realtime client and server hot-patching and problem investigation, if it could be made bulletproof enough not to also serve as a gigantic SPoF or security vulnerability. But I don't know if it's really similar to what you're thinking of.

philippeback 10y ago

Actually there is one more approach: https://pharojs.github.io/ https://pharojs.github.io/ Amber is interesting because of how it evolves and what it can do, like having real compiler producing JS as output. One can learn quite a bit by studying it. Tools have to be better and there are some limitations but still, an interesting experience.

philippnagel 10y ago

Reminds me of http://witheve.com http://witheve.com, similar intentions at least.

FrancoDiaz 10y ago

I'm not a big fan of the Smalltalk language, but I think Smalltalk's greatest contribution to development was putting forward the idea that development environments are important for productivity.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Actually, Lisp did that first (as did Emacs). But yes, ST popularized the idea (which is somewhat paradoxical, as, like Lisp, ST never actually caught on).
- pjmlp 10y ago
  You have to thank Sun and Java for it. Enterprise was adopting Smalltalk when Java came out. Even Eclipse was actually Visual Age for Smalltalk refurbished.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    You're not wrong, but I read that as 'thank': had it not been for Sun & Java, then maybe — just maybe — the development industry would have advanced beyond the 1960s/early 1970s. Can you imagine if the standard language of enterprise development today were Smalltalk? Can you imagine if the standard language of the Web were Lisp (or Scheme)? Can you imagine if we'd sunk all the work into making Lisp & Smalltalk great that we instead sunk into making Java & JavaScript not so terrible that they cause spontaneous seppuku?
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Yes because I used Smalltalk and Oberon (influenced by Mesa/Cedar), and although not directly related RAD tooling like Delphi and C++ Builder. Which is why after my initial enchantment with UNIX, I grew tired of using a graphical workstation to manage xterms.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago