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I agree that Alan Kay is brilliant, but to be completely fair, if Squeak is the way forward, I think I'm happy where I am. It's not bad, but the tradeoffs are s

by chc 14y ago

I agree that Alan Kay is brilliant, but to be completely fair, if Squeak is the way forward, I think I'm happy where I am. It's not bad, but the tradeoffs are such that it's hard to imagine ever using it for production software.

mythz 14y ago
Note: Squeak/Smalltalk were revolutionary at the time and influenced many of the modern languages we use today. The way forward isn't to use Squeak/Smalltalk (which Alan also wanted to kill off), it's to be inspired by their ideas, embrace the good, rework the bad and to build something better.
- krichman 14y ago
  Yes. Smalltalk was a work of genius. It seems like every good idea in modern languages I learn about turns out to have been poached from either Smalltalk or Lisp.
grinich 14y ago
Every use Objective-C? It's pretty much Smalltalk with C backwards compatibility.
- chc 14y ago
  I've been using Objective-C for about 12 years now. It is similar to Smalltalk in its message system and naming conventions — which, to be fair, were at the core of Kay's Smalltalk vision — but otherwise the experience of programming in Objective-C is not much like programming in Squeak.
  - nzeribe 14y ago
    That is no bad thing, because programming in Squeak absolutely blows programming in Xcode away.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  It's Smalltalk but without the image, without browsers, without inspectors, without live objects, without... Well... you get it...
  - chc 14y ago
    If you're interested in seeing what Objective-C would be like with a more Smalltalky environment, you might find F-Script interesting.
gngeal 14y ago
"but to be completely fair, if Squeak is the way forward, I think I'm happy where I am." Well, it's still the language from the year 1980. The very fact that you judge a 1980-vintage system as "not bad" compared to existing alternatives is telling in itself. Alan is working on a 2010 version even as we speak. :-)

by chc 14y ago

mythz 14y ago

Note: Squeak/Smalltalk were revolutionary at the time and influenced many of the modern languages we use today. The way forward isn't to use Squeak/Smalltalk (which Alan also wanted to kill off), it's to be inspired by their ideas, embrace the good, rework the bad and to build something better.

krichman 14y ago
Yes. Smalltalk was a work of genius. It seems like every good idea in modern languages I learn about turns out to have been poached from either Smalltalk or Lisp.

grinich 14y ago

Every use Objective-C? It's pretty much Smalltalk with C backwards compatibility.

chc 14y ago
I've been using Objective-C for about 12 years now. It is similar to Smalltalk in its message system and naming conventions — which, to be fair, were at the core of Kay's Smalltalk vision — but otherwise the experience of programming in Objective-C is not much like programming in Squeak.
- nzeribe 14y ago
  That is no bad thing, because programming in Squeak absolutely blows programming in Xcode away.
rbanffy 14y ago
It's Smalltalk but without the image, without browsers, without inspectors, without live objects, without... Well... you get it...
- chc 14y ago
  If you're interested in seeing what Objective-C would be like with a more Smalltalky environment, you might find F-Script interesting.

gngeal 14y ago

"but to be completely fair, if Squeak is the way forward, I think I'm happy where I am." Well, it's still the language from the year 1980. The very fact that you judge a 1980-vintage system as "not bad" compared to existing alternatives is telling in itself. Alan is working on a 2010 version even as we speak. :-)