7 ms·

I recently started experimenting with Squeak. It's a bit dated, but holy crap, that thing is amazing. So many good ideas packed in so few megabytes. The startup

I recently started experimenting with Squeak. It's a bit dated, but holy crap, that thing is amazing. So many good ideas packed in so few megabytes. The startup time alone blows my mind. It's pretty much a virtual machine with a sort-of-operating-system that runs an IDE for all of its own source code, and it loads faster than 95% of all vanilla desktop apps I use today.

protomyth 8y ago
I could see having the same setup as a browser except every url downloads a vm. I do wish Squeak would update its look and feel though.
- scroot 8y ago
  They are still using bitmapped graphics under the hood, which explains some of the limitation. The community has shrunk, which means there's no one to take them to the world of vector. However, Pharo people are implementing a new vector engine called Bloc.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Pharo is pretty much the future. I wonder if WebAssembly and it’s upcoming ecosystem will be useful to take some load on a future Smalltalk? [edit: since I’m getting the posting too fast crap here is another language mentioned in the article KRL by Danny Bobrow and Terry Winograd https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/033e/cd544c4e71b14a7d3ee0611a300a20b91232.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/033e/cd544c4e71b14a7d3ee061... ]
    - scroot 8y ago
      I think about that all the time. Imagine a Smalltalk VM written in WASM. It could load with every site and every site could just be live Smalltalk.
      - sumim 8y ago
        Although it's not WASM, perhaps you will prefer http://squeak.js.org/ http://squeak.js.org/ , a Squeak VM written in JavaScript.
      - 3rdAccount 8y ago
        There's a guy that's written a nice looking Smalltalk in Ruby that works perfectly well in the browser with rails I think.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >They are still using bitmapped graphics under the hood, which explains some of the limitation. The community has shrunk, which means there's no one to take them to the world of vector. Most (all?) commercial OSes don't use vectors for their GUIs either.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Android and Windows (UWP) do use quite a lot of vector based graphics.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Yeah, Apple has some APIs for rendering widgets from vectors too, and Gnome (for icons) but most widgets, ui elements and apps are still bitmap based.

protomyth 8y ago

I could see having the same setup as a browser except every url downloads a vm. I do wish Squeak would update its look and feel though.

scroot 8y ago
They are still using bitmapped graphics under the hood, which explains some of the limitation. The community has shrunk, which means there's no one to take them to the world of vector. However, Pharo people are implementing a new vector engine called Bloc.
- protomyth 8y ago
  Pharo is pretty much the future. I wonder if WebAssembly and it’s upcoming ecosystem will be useful to take some load on a future Smalltalk? [edit: since I’m getting the posting too fast crap here is another language mentioned in the article KRL by Danny Bobrow and Terry Winograd https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/033e/cd544c4e71b14a7d3ee0611a300a20b91232.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/033e/cd544c4e71b14a7d3ee061... ]
  - scroot 8y ago
    I think about that all the time. Imagine a Smalltalk VM written in WASM. It could load with every site and every site could just be live Smalltalk.
    - sumim 8y ago
      Although it's not WASM, perhaps you will prefer http://squeak.js.org/ http://squeak.js.org/ , a Squeak VM written in JavaScript.
    - 3rdAccount 8y ago
      There's a guy that's written a nice looking Smalltalk in Ruby that works perfectly well in the browser with rails I think.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >They are still using bitmapped graphics under the hood, which explains some of the limitation. The community has shrunk, which means there's no one to take them to the world of vector. Most (all?) commercial OSes don't use vectors for their GUIs either.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Android and Windows (UWP) do use quite a lot of vector based graphics.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Yeah, Apple has some APIs for rendering widgets from vectors too, and Gnome (for icons) but most widgets, ui elements and apps are still bitmap based.