Smalltalk to get a second crack at the whip

louiscyphre 9 years ago |

Smalltalk is the second most loved programming language, according to the 2017 StackOverflow survey. (Rust is most loved.) If any language deserves a second chance, it's Smalltalk.

Thus, there's no reason why Smalltalk can't be widely adopted, whether it's in the enterprise or elsewhere (teaching, hobbyist, research, machine learning, natural language processing, IoT, virtual reality, etc.).

Teaching: https://medium.com/p/an-open-letter-to-all-universities-ad98...

Machine learning: https://biosmalltalk.github.io/web/

IoT: https://medium.com/concerning-pharo/pharo-pi-9eef257b6a21

Virtual reality: http://www.opencobalt.net and http://www.3dicc.com

mstade 9 years ago |

It's too bad this targeted a language that's actually useful, as opposed to something like brainfuck. For me the joke fell flat because of it. I would've loved to see this kind of investment – alas, such are the follies of this day.

pebblexe 9 years ago |

Hopefully they introduce namespaces (like matriona) and the type system of strongtalk with gradual typing.

edit: just realized this was an april fools :(

agumonkey 9 years ago | |

I've a lot of Pharo (ex Squeak) since a few years. Even done a MOOC which was very interesting. I could have believed this blog.

aaroninsf 9 years ago |

A tear for the old skool.

Never again shall the sun of youth shine again

nor my code wander tended glades with wonder plain

and vigor unbound, exposed, unashamed, all in one

world

ljw1001 9 years ago | |

that's just what I was thinking

horrido 9 years ago | |

Nice!

Would you mind if I used this?

derrickdirge 9 years ago |

So is Smalltalk a joke language now?

throwaway7645 9 years ago | |

No the author Richard Eng has been doing a ton of short marketing blog posts trying to get more attention for the language and appears to have an April Fool's sense of humor. He's also been talking about Go a lot which is very different than Smalltalk in all but the simplicity aspect.

coldtea 9 years ago |

Month aside, it would be a great thing to actually happen...

Instead of e.g. Google investing tens of millions on BS like Dart.

metricodus 9 years ago | |

What's so bad about Dart, if you disregard the "Google is trying to subvert the web" angst from people who have invested heavily in the javascript world? I quite like the optional typing in the language, for instance.

I just wish there was more serverside-development happening in Dart - it seems 95% client-side focused at the moment (dart2js and flutter).

coldtea 9 years ago | | |

>What's so bad about Dart, if you disregard the "Google is trying to subvert the web" angst? I quite like the optional typing in the language, for instance.

A new language that doesn't solve anything better than Smalltalk did.

metricodus 9 years ago | | |

It does provide the feature of optional typing, as I just said. I spent my formative years developing in a language with optional typing and really grew to like it. I think it's a great concept that has missed the mainstream somehow.

Besides from that the syntax is completely different, being inherited from C.

skybrian 9 years ago | | |

Dart is moving away from optional typing towards static typing with inference. (It's useful for ahead-of-time compilation.) Take a look at strong mode. But since you can leave out the types in simple situations, it often looks the same.

throwaway7645 9 years ago | | |

Is optional typing the same thing as gradual typing in Perl6 as in you can specify types, but don't have to?

metricodus 9 years ago | | |

I don't know much about Perl, but this describes Dart's approach to optional typing:

https://www.dartlang.org/articles/language/optional-types

(But meh, it's not really innovative/new as this page says, just not popular.)

Basically, it's a language that allows you to choose the level of type checking. You can be super strict all the time, or only when it matters. Or not at all.

Like all other modern languages it naturally has the basic collection data types built in so that you don't have to reinvent them.

willtim 9 years ago | | |

Decent static typing with inference has also missed the mainstream

willtim 9 years ago | | |

Dart is just a Java-clone by some of the same people and hasn't really incorporated any lessons from 20 years of Java. For example, their answer to Tony Hoare's billion-dollar mistake is... "The Elvis operator"

jcstk 9 years ago | | |

For server side Dart, http://stablekernel.github.io/aqueduct/

erikj 9 years ago |

I wish this wasn't a joke.

throwaway7645 9 years ago |

Lol, I assumed a joke immediately due to the figure and subject, but forgot the date for a second :)

Edit: I don't think Smalltalk is a joke, just that HP wouldn't think this a worthy investment.

pacaro 9 years ago | |

I think "Sun Microsystems marketing muscle" was what made me raise an eyebrow

throwaway7645 9 years ago | | |

They did spend a fortune marketing Java when Smalltalk was poised to be THE new enterprise language.

pacaro 9 years ago | | |

I remember all too well. Sun had mindshare at the time too, in a way that the far bigger IBM didn't. I'm just glad none of the 4GLs won

throwaway7645 9 years ago | | |

I'll cede my past reading of internet blog articles describing a time I was pooping in diapers to your actual real-world experience :)

2 questions..why did the smaller Sun have more mindshare and what were the 4GLs? I might not be familiar with the term.

pacaro 9 years ago | | |

The Fourth Generation Languages where supposed to take over from the Third Generation Languages (C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL etc.) for higher level work (like business computing)

Many have been successful within niches, but Java was a brand new 3GL at a time when a lot of industry focus was on 4GLs.

I think sun had mindshare because they understood the nascent internet much better. From my perspective it was the first time I had seen a marketing effort of that scale behind a programming language.

Sun also supported SunSITE which was pretty much the best place to find FOSS at the time

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...

igouy 9 years ago | | |

Back in the day.

(To appreciate the joke, check-out which companies had Smalltalk development).