5 ms·

Byte: The Smalltalk Issue (1981) [pdf]

37 points by shawndumas 12y ago

austinz 12y ago
The visual language grammar starting on page 40 is fascinating.
- shawndumas 12y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=railroad+diagram&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=railroad+diagram&ie=UTF-8&oe...
  - austinz 12y ago
    I had no idea. Thanks for the link!
    - shawndumas 12y ago
      Not a problem at all. I first came across them in The Good Parts: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpts/javascript-good-parts/syntax-diagrams.html http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpts/javascri...
      - riffraff 12y ago
        they are also up front in json.org http://www.json.org/ http://www.json.org/
    - joezydeco 12y ago
      If you were an Apple ][ fan in the early days you probably had a copy of their Pascal language poster, and it was cool: http://www.pascal-central.com/pascal-syntax.html http://www.pascal-central.com/pascal-syntax.html
    - dunham 12y ago
      Those diagrams also appear in "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation", which is now freely available: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.pdf (pages 737-741 of the pdf)
zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
The amount of advertising puts even Wired to shame. Holy cow.
- shawndumas 12y ago
  but it is more than 400 pages though
  - davelnewton 12y ago
    And back then it was devoured, greedily, by essentially anybody who was interested in computing. We had BBSs but no internet; information dissemination was radically different than today. Hobbyist computer magazines in those days were what we had, except for user groups.
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      Who could afford BBSs? In Portugal it meant long distance calls to Lisbon or Porto, into systems that were time limited and with up to 10 connections.
- edmccard 12y ago
  >The amount of advertising... ...was a reason people subscribed to computer magazines in the days before the internet, because it was one of the best ways to find out about (and purchase via mail-order) new stuff.
- teh_klev 12y ago
  Back in the day Byte was a chunky affair packed full of goodness. I didn't mind the ads, they were part of the charm. I kept all my Byte magazines from when I started reading it in ~1982 until they stopped printing it in 1998. Sadly I was very short sighted and "recycled" them - but when you've moved house frequently, shifting 15 years worth of Byte's got a bit back breaking. I used to enjoy digging out older issues to read both the articles and review the ads with a sense of nostalgia.
pjmlp 12y ago
It was a great experience diving into Smalltalk via VisualWorks in the mid-90's at the university. Then the following year, Java was announced to the world...
teddyh 12y ago
In the “Letters” section, page 32, Stephen Hain of the MIT Logo laboratory writes about how his implementation of the Logo programming language for the Apple computer which he was writing at MIT, with the initial understanding that it would be placed in the public domain, has been shelved indefinitely by MIT, withheld from the public. Why? Because Texas Instruments sells a version of Logo which was not as good, (for its TI-99/4 computer), and Texas Instruments essentially influenced MIT to scrap the program instead of releasing it in any form. It is 1981; it will be a few years still before Richard Stallman quits his job at MIT and starts the GNU project. I wonder if he knew about this.
davelnewton 12y ago
This is one of the few paper issues of Byte I've saved for all these years, actually. That magazine, along with 80 Micro, got me through grade school.

37 points by shawndumas 12y ago

austinz 12y ago

The visual language grammar starting on page 40 is fascinating.

shawndumas 12y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=railroad+diagram&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=railroad+diagram&ie=UTF-8&oe...
- austinz 12y ago
  I had no idea. Thanks for the link!
  - shawndumas 12y ago
    Not a problem at all. I first came across them in The Good Parts: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpts/javascript-good-parts/syntax-diagrams.html http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpts/javascri...
    - riffraff 12y ago
      they are also up front in json.org http://www.json.org/ http://www.json.org/
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    If you were an Apple ][ fan in the early days you probably had a copy of their Pascal language poster, and it was cool: http://www.pascal-central.com/pascal-syntax.html http://www.pascal-central.com/pascal-syntax.html
  - dunham 12y ago
    Those diagrams also appear in "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation", which is now freely available: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.pdf (pages 737-741 of the pdf)

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

The amount of advertising puts even Wired to shame. Holy cow.

shawndumas 12y ago
but it is more than 400 pages though
- davelnewton 12y ago
  And back then it was devoured, greedily, by essentially anybody who was interested in computing. We had BBSs but no internet; information dissemination was radically different than today. Hobbyist computer magazines in those days were what we had, except for user groups.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Who could afford BBSs? In Portugal it meant long distance calls to Lisbon or Porto, into systems that were time limited and with up to 10 connections.
edmccard 12y ago
>The amount of advertising... ...was a reason people subscribed to computer magazines in the days before the internet, because it was one of the best ways to find out about (and purchase via mail-order) new stuff.
teh_klev 12y ago
Back in the day Byte was a chunky affair packed full of goodness. I didn't mind the ads, they were part of the charm. I kept all my Byte magazines from when I started reading it in ~1982 until they stopped printing it in 1998. Sadly I was very short sighted and "recycled" them - but when you've moved house frequently, shifting 15 years worth of Byte's got a bit back breaking. I used to enjoy digging out older issues to read both the articles and review the ads with a sense of nostalgia.

pjmlp 12y ago

It was a great experience diving into Smalltalk via VisualWorks in the mid-90's at the university. Then the following year, Java was announced to the world...

teddyh 12y ago

In the “Letters” section, page 32, Stephen Hain of the MIT Logo laboratory writes about how his implementation of the Logo programming language for the Apple computer which he was writing at MIT, with the initial understanding that it would be placed in the public domain, has been shelved indefinitely by MIT, withheld from the public. Why? Because Texas Instruments sells a version of Logo which was not as good, (for its TI-99/4 computer), and Texas Instruments essentially influenced MIT to scrap the program instead of releasing it in any form. It is 1981; it will be a few years still before Richard Stallman quits his job at MIT and starts the GNU project. I wonder if he knew about this.

davelnewton 12y ago

This is one of the few paper issues of Byte I've saved for all these years, actually. That magazine, along with 80 Micro, got me through grade school.