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> To me, unreadable languages are languages that rely heavily on symbols. Interestingly, the first Smalltalk, Smalltalk-72, used loads of symbols.[0] Introduci
by baryphonic 5y ago
> To me, unreadable languages are languages that rely heavily on symbols.
Interestingly, the first Smalltalk, Smalltalk-72, used loads of symbols.[0] Introducing a new variable used an index finger symbol. Evaluating a message used an opened eyeball. The "turtle" was represented by something looking like a smiley face. There's a working emulator of Smalltalk-72 on Dan Ingalls' website, and I'd recommend playing around with it.[1] They really embraced the "everything is messages" thing, and couldn't figure out how to optimize it on their hardware (since the language is frankly way too powerful and not amenable to static analysis). If they could have seen the utility of something like a JIT, the future might have turned out differently, but as it happens, the Smalltalk variant Self was the first highly-efficient one, almost 20 years after Smalltalk-72.
Sun later cannibalized the Self team to have them focus on Java performance, and the result was the HotSpot VM, which in some ways saved Java from being a failure.
[0] http://www.esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/Smalltalk72/Smalltalk72Manual.pdf http://www.esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/Smalltalk72/Sma...
[1] https://lively-web.org/users/Dan/ALTO-Smalltalk-72.html https://lively-web.org/users/Dan/ALTO-Smalltalk-72.html
- redtexture 5y agoPage numbers on the first citation?
- Jtsummers 5y agoPage 16 for the PDF, actual page # is 9. It shows up earlier but that's the best early example of the little face representing the turtle.
- igouy 5y agoafaik Smalltalk-80 was the language that gave rise to implementations that were available outside the lab. Smalltalk-80 was the language IBM trained their consultants to use.
- xkriva11 5y agoThere was one Smalltalk-72 inspired implementation not created by PARC. It was based on their publications before Smalltalk-80 was released. Rosetta Smalltalk
- igouy 5y agoafaict That was a “prototype”. Was it ever made available to anyone beyond the authors?
- infinite8s 5y agoIt was supposed to be released to run on Z80 machines. Apparently it was killed when Smalltalk-80 was starting to be released (if Ted Nelson is to be believed): https://archive.org/details/RosettaBrochure/RosettaBrochure/page/n0/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/RosettaBrochure/RosettaBrochure/...
- xkriva11 5y agoThey wrote: Rosetta Smalltalk was shown at the Exidy booth at NCC'81 and beta-tested at about 40 sites across the country. But it was unfortunatelly discarded as soon as Xerox published Smalltalk-80.
- igouy 5y agoFair enough, I don't wish to diminish their work, or lionize Smalltalk-72 over Smalltalk-80.