4 ms·

What makes this significant compared to Dolphin Smalltalk (now open source, great, Windows-centric), and Pharo (forward looking evolution of Squeak)?

protomyth 9y ago
If I remember correctly, Smalltalk/X generated executables so yo didn't have to ship an image & VM. It was faster than the others and could run on Windows and Linux. It was a pretty good product back in the day.
brudgers 9y ago
I'm not sure about significance. For me currently, being available on Linux is relevant relative to Dolphin, though I am not anti-Windows by any means, I just have a strong preference for tiling window managers and use Xmonad. In regards to Pharo, and again for me, I don't currently have a need for a much more evolved Smalltalk...roughly speaking, Smalltalk-80 more or less meets my current needs. And for total disclosure, I am currently messing round with GNU-Smalltalk in Emacs because...well, Emacs. I stumbled across Smalltalk/X:jv branch when I was looking for information about `while` semantics. I wanted to test a `while true` type loop. For sanity, I figured I should put a delay in there before `'foo' printNl`. But the GNU Emacs documentation was more like Javadoc than a user guide and so I Googled up this: http://swing.fit.cvut.cz/projects/stx/doc/online/english/programming/timing.html#DELAY http://swing.fit.cvut.cz/projects/stx/doc/online/english/pro.... One thing led to another, as the say, and the rest is this link.
stcredzero 9y ago
Back in the day (early 2000's) it had some interesting features. I remember seeing a facility for writing methods in C, but I'm not sure if that was a demo or if that made it as a feature. Also, if I recall correctly, it was a JIT VM when Squeak and Dolphin didn't have one.
- jan_vrany 9y ago
  It still has this feature. In fact, is built so deep into the system it cannot be used without inline C. Smalltalk/X does not support primitives (or native methods if you come from Java world). Instead, you use inline C to escape Smalltalk world.

protomyth 9y ago

If I remember correctly, Smalltalk/X generated executables so yo didn't have to ship an image & VM. It was faster than the others and could run on Windows and Linux. It was a pretty good product back in the day.

brudgers 9y ago

I'm not sure about significance. For me currently, being available on Linux is relevant relative to Dolphin, though I am not anti-Windows by any means, I just have a strong preference for tiling window managers and use Xmonad. In regards to Pharo, and again for me, I don't currently have a need for a much more evolved Smalltalk...roughly speaking, Smalltalk-80 more or less meets my current needs. And for total disclosure, I am currently messing round with GNU-Smalltalk in Emacs because...well, Emacs. I stumbled across Smalltalk/X:jv branch when I was looking for information about `while` semantics. I wanted to test a `while true` type loop. For sanity, I figured I should put a delay in there before `'foo' printNl`. But the GNU Emacs documentation was more like Javadoc than a user guide and so I Googled up this: http://swing.fit.cvut.cz/projects/stx/doc/online/english/programming/timing.html#DELAY http://swing.fit.cvut.cz/projects/stx/doc/online/english/pro.... One thing led to another, as the say, and the rest is this link.

stcredzero 9y ago

Back in the day (early 2000's) it had some interesting features. I remember seeing a facility for writing methods in C, but I'm not sure if that was a demo or if that made it as a feature. Also, if I recall correctly, it was a JIT VM when Squeak and Dolphin didn't have one.

jan_vrany 9y ago
It still has this feature. In fact, is built so deep into the system it cannot be used without inline C. Smalltalk/X does not support primitives (or native methods if you come from Java world). Instead, you use inline C to escape Smalltalk world.