5 ms·

Is Smalltalk a weird cause to fight for?

8 points by louiscyphre 7y ago

MH15 7y ago
This article is very uninformative. Author spends entire post building up to simply saying Smalltalk will make the world better, and does not continue. No rationale is provided.
- louiscyphre 7y ago
  Well, this article is simply an explanation for why he's an evangelist, sort of a stream of consciousness thing. If you follow his blog, you will find hundreds of informative posts about how and why Smalltalk is so remarkable in terms of simplicity, ease of use, flexibility, versatility, maintainability, scalability, and most importantly, productivity.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    As someone who doesn't follow his blog, my summary is: "lots of people have 'weird' interests. I think Smalltalk is the best programming language. It's so good it can help save the world." Sure, there might be explanations elsewhere, just like there are evangelists for Lisp ... or Perl 6. And with similar arguments. Take http://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html http://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html from 2002 as an example: > I did try to introduce Lisp to Google. Having had some experience selling Lisp at JPL I got all my ducks in a row, had a cool demo going, showed it to all the other members of the ads team, and had them all convinced that this was a good idea. The only thing left was to get approval from the VP of engineering. The conversation went something like this: Me: I'd like to talk to you about something... Him: Let me guess - you want to use Smalltalk. Me: Er, no... Him: Lisp? Me: Right. Him: No way. That was 17 years ago! Any essay which doesn't take into account the "Lisp-weenie" stereotype (see http://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie http://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie ) is preaching to the choir. I ended up putting this essay into the pile of other advocacy-for-language-X pieces I've read, with no interest in reading other blog postings. But I did anyway. https://medium.com/@richardeng/how-does-python-make-thinking-in-code-easier-35a4dbb94711 https://medium.com/@richardeng/how-does-python-make-thinking... ("Pythonistas will also tell you that Python’s syntax reads like English"). 1) It's a strawman argument, as I'm a Pythonista and I don't say that, and 2) AppleScript is more English-like than Smalltalk, so if "English-like" were really a goal, that's more like what we should be using. https://levelup.gitconnected.com/python-vs-pharo-df47599a8ed0 https://levelup.gitconnected.com/python-vs-pharo-df47599a8ed... ("Python vs Pharo") asserts that Pharo is easier to learn than Python. However, it provides no empirical evidence that the chosen metrics are appropriate. The ABC language, which was a strong influence on Python, show how empirical tests can be done. As an example from Python, a high school teacher presented at a Python conference almost 20 years ago. The AP test at that time used C++ or Java - I can't remember which. He found it was easier to teach Python first, then C++ or Java, than to do everything in C++ or Java. While this is anecdotal evidence, it's still more substantial than an argument based on being able to fit the syntax on a post card. (If that were important, use Lisp, Forth, or APL, all of which have simpler syntax.) And so on.
    - lizmat 7y ago
      > just like there are evangelists for Lisp ... or Perl 6 Please note that Perl 6 has been renamed to Raku (https://raku.org https://raku.org using the #rakulang tag on social media). </evangelism>
      - eesmith 7y ago
        While I see your point, I'll add that there is no language called "Lisp", or rather, that language stopped in the 1960s while other Lisp dialects developed. "Lisp evangelist" is instead applied to the wider set of Lisp-like languages. As a point of pedantry, should Perl 6 (the programming language of 4 months ago) be considered a Raku dialect? Or vice versa?
        lizmat 7y ago
        I would argue that Rakudo used to implement a Perl 6 dialect, and that it now implements a Raku dialect. Perl 6 and Raku share just about everything, except the name :-)
        eesmith 7y ago
        C, Objective C, C++, Java, and C# are part of a family of related languages. These may be referred to as "C-like" languages. The C-like languages, plus Pascal, Ada, and others, are part of the Algol superfamily of languages. "Family" and "superfamily" aren't well defined, in the way that it is for biological taxonomy, but I think it's intuitively clear enough for this discussion. The Python family includes the various CPython language implementations, plus JPython/Jython, Iron Python, and PyPy, as well as wider-away dialects like Cython. At some point it's part of the Python superfamily. What's the name for the family of languages which includes Perl 6 and Raku? I think "Perl-like" includes Perl 4, 5, and 6, Raku, as well as (further away), Ruby. I think Perl 6 and Raku are parts of the Perl 6 family, following the usual tradition of naming language families after the first instance in that family. (It isn't always that, see https://wiki.c2.com/?WirthLanguages https://wiki.c2.com/?WirthLanguages ). What would you suggest as the family name for Raku and Perl 6 which excludes the more distant members of the family, like Perl 5? Delphi is an Object Pascal, for example.

8 points by louiscyphre 7y ago

MH15 7y ago

This article is very uninformative. Author spends entire post building up to simply saying Smalltalk will make the world better, and does not continue. No rationale is provided.

louiscyphre 7y ago
Well, this article is simply an explanation for why he's an evangelist, sort of a stream of consciousness thing. If you follow his blog, you will find hundreds of informative posts about how and why Smalltalk is so remarkable in terms of simplicity, ease of use, flexibility, versatility, maintainability, scalability, and most importantly, productivity.
- eesmith 7y ago
  As someone who doesn't follow his blog, my summary is: "lots of people have 'weird' interests. I think Smalltalk is the best programming language. It's so good it can help save the world." Sure, there might be explanations elsewhere, just like there are evangelists for Lisp ... or Perl 6. And with similar arguments. Take http://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html http://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html from 2002 as an example: > I did try to introduce Lisp to Google. Having had some experience selling Lisp at JPL I got all my ducks in a row, had a cool demo going, showed it to all the other members of the ads team, and had them all convinced that this was a good idea. The only thing left was to get approval from the VP of engineering. The conversation went something like this: Me: I'd like to talk to you about something... Him: Let me guess - you want to use Smalltalk. Me: Er, no... Him: Lisp? Me: Right. Him: No way. That was 17 years ago! Any essay which doesn't take into account the "Lisp-weenie" stereotype (see http://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie http://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie ) is preaching to the choir. I ended up putting this essay into the pile of other advocacy-for-language-X pieces I've read, with no interest in reading other blog postings. But I did anyway. https://medium.com/@richardeng/how-does-python-make-thinking-in-code-easier-35a4dbb94711 https://medium.com/@richardeng/how-does-python-make-thinking... ("Pythonistas will also tell you that Python’s syntax reads like English"). 1) It's a strawman argument, as I'm a Pythonista and I don't say that, and 2) AppleScript is more English-like than Smalltalk, so if "English-like" were really a goal, that's more like what we should be using. https://levelup.gitconnected.com/python-vs-pharo-df47599a8ed0 https://levelup.gitconnected.com/python-vs-pharo-df47599a8ed... ("Python vs Pharo") asserts that Pharo is easier to learn than Python. However, it provides no empirical evidence that the chosen metrics are appropriate. The ABC language, which was a strong influence on Python, show how empirical tests can be done. As an example from Python, a high school teacher presented at a Python conference almost 20 years ago. The AP test at that time used C++ or Java - I can't remember which. He found it was easier to teach Python first, then C++ or Java, than to do everything in C++ or Java. While this is anecdotal evidence, it's still more substantial than an argument based on being able to fit the syntax on a post card. (If that were important, use Lisp, Forth, or APL, all of which have simpler syntax.) And so on.
  - lizmat 7y ago
    > just like there are evangelists for Lisp ... or Perl 6 Please note that Perl 6 has been renamed to Raku (https://raku.org https://raku.org using the #rakulang tag on social media). </evangelism>
    - eesmith 7y ago
      While I see your point, I'll add that there is no language called "Lisp", or rather, that language stopped in the 1960s while other Lisp dialects developed. "Lisp evangelist" is instead applied to the wider set of Lisp-like languages. As a point of pedantry, should Perl 6 (the programming language of 4 months ago) be considered a Raku dialect? Or vice versa?
      - lizmat 7y ago
        I would argue that Rakudo used to implement a Perl 6 dialect, and that it now implements a Raku dialect. Perl 6 and Raku share just about everything, except the name :-)
        eesmith 7y ago
        C, Objective C, C++, Java, and C# are part of a family of related languages. These may be referred to as "C-like" languages. The C-like languages, plus Pascal, Ada, and others, are part of the Algol superfamily of languages. "Family" and "superfamily" aren't well defined, in the way that it is for biological taxonomy, but I think it's intuitively clear enough for this discussion. The Python family includes the various CPython language implementations, plus JPython/Jython, Iron Python, and PyPy, as well as wider-away dialects like Cython. At some point it's part of the Python superfamily. What's the name for the family of languages which includes Perl 6 and Raku? I think "Perl-like" includes Perl 4, 5, and 6, Raku, as well as (further away), Ruby. I think Perl 6 and Raku are parts of the Perl 6 family, following the usual tradition of naming language families after the first instance in that family. (It isn't always that, see https://wiki.c2.com/?WirthLanguages https://wiki.c2.com/?WirthLanguages ). What would you suggest as the family name for Raku and Perl 6 which excludes the more distant members of the family, like Perl 5? Delphi is an Object Pascal, for example.