5 ms·
Smalltalk to get a second crack at the whip
- throwaway7645 10y agoLol, I assumed a joke immediately due to the figure and subject, but forgot the date for a second :) Edit: I don't think Smalltalk is a joke, just that HP wouldn't think this a worthy investment.
- pacaro 10y agoI think "Sun Microsystems marketing muscle" was what made me raise an eyebrow
- igouy 10y agoBack in the day. (To appreciate the joke, check-out which companies had Smalltalk development).
- throwaway7645 10y agoThey did spend a fortune marketing Java when Smalltalk was poised to be THE new enterprise language.
- pacaro 10y agoI remember all too well. Sun had mindshare at the time too, in a way that the far bigger IBM didn't. I'm just glad none of the 4GLs won
- throwaway7645 10y agoI'll cede my past reading of internet blog articles describing a time I was pooping in diapers to your actual real-world experience :) 2 questions..why did the smaller Sun have more mindshare and what were the 4GLs? I might not be familiar with the term.
- pacaro 10y agoThe Fourth Generation Languages where supposed to take over from the Third Generation Languages (C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL etc.) for higher level work (like business computing) Many have been successful within niches, but Java was a brand new 3GL at a time when a lot of industry focus was on 4GLs. I think sun had mindshare because they understood the nascent internet much better. From my perspective it was the first time I had seen a marketing effort of that scale behind a programming language. Sun also supported SunSITE which was pretty much the best place to find FOSS at the time [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...
- throwaway7645 9y agoInteresting thanks!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 10y agoMonth aside, it would be a great thing to actually happen... Instead of e.g. Google investing tens of millions on BS like Dart.
- metricodus 10y agoWhat's so bad about Dart, if you disregard the "Google is trying to subvert the web" angst from people who have invested heavily in the javascript world? I quite like the optional typing in the language, for instance. I just wish there was more serverside-development happening in Dart - it seems 95% client-side focused at the moment (dart2js and flutter).
- coldtea 10y ago>What's so bad about Dart, if you disregard the "Google is trying to subvert the web" angst? I quite like the optional typing in the language, for instance. A new language that doesn't solve anything better than Smalltalk did.
- metricodus 10y agoIt does provide the feature of optional typing, as I just said. I spent my formative years developing in a language with optional typing and really grew to like it. I think it's a great concept that has missed the mainstream somehow. Besides from that the syntax is completely different, being inherited from C.
- throwaway7645 10y agoIs optional typing the same thing as gradual typing in Perl6 as in you can specify types, but don't have to?
- metricodus 10y agoI don't know much about Perl, but this describes Dart's approach to optional typing: https://www.dartlang.org/articles/language/optional-types https://www.dartlang.org/articles/language/optional-types (But meh, it's not really innovative/new as this page says, just not popular.) Basically, it's a language that allows you to choose the level of type checking. You can be super strict all the time, or only when it matters. Or not at all. Like all other modern languages it naturally has the basic collection data types built in so that you don't have to reinvent them.
- derrickdirge 10y agoSo is Smalltalk a joke language now?
- throwaway7645 10y agoNo the author Richard Eng has been doing a ton of short marketing blog posts trying to get more attention for the language and appears to have an April Fool's sense of humor. He's also been talking about Go a lot which is very different than Smalltalk in all but the simplicity aspect.
- pebblexe 10y agoHopefully they introduce namespaces (like matriona) and the type system of strongtalk with gradual typing. edit: just realized this was an april fools :(
- agumonkey 10y agoI've a lot of Pharo (ex Squeak) since a few years. Even done a MOOC which was very interesting. I could have believed this blog.
- mstade 10y agoIt's too bad this targeted a language that's actually useful, as opposed to something like brainfuck. For me the joke fell flat because of it. I would've loved to see this kind of investment – alas, such are the follies of this day.
- aaroninsf 10y agoA tear for the old skool. Never again shall the sun of youth shine again nor my code wander tended glades with wonder plain and vigor unbound, exposed, unashamed, all in one world
- erikj 10y agoI wish this wasn't a joke.
- louiscyphre 10y agoSmalltalk is the second most loved programming language, according to the 2017 StackOverflow survey. (Rust is most loved.) If any language deserves a second chance, it's Smalltalk. Thus, there's no reason why Smalltalk can't be widely adopted, whether it's in the enterprise or elsewhere (teaching, hobbyist, research, machine learning, natural language processing, IoT, virtual reality, etc.). Teaching: https://medium.com/p/an-open-letter-to-all-universities-ad98af4a96b3 https://medium.com/p/an-open-letter-to-all-universities-ad98... Machine learning: https://biosmalltalk.github.io/web/ https://biosmalltalk.github.io/web/ IoT: https://medium.com/concerning-pharo/pharo-pi-9eef257b6a21 https://medium.com/concerning-pharo/pharo-pi-9eef257b6a21 Virtual reality: http://www.opencobalt.net http://www.opencobalt.net and http://www.3dicc.com http://www.3dicc.com