Smalltalk passion
I’m very rational programmer, with a academic bias. I know C, C++, Java, Perl, PHP, VBScript, Object Pascal and Prolog languages. But my language of choice is beyond the rational. Smalltalk.
Smalltalk is much more than a language, is a concept, a vision. Much of what we use today was inspired in the Smalltalk ideas and environment. Steve Jobs only saw the mouse and the window system, if he saw the Smalltalk language too, our lifes would be better now.
“But if Smalltalk is so good, why isn’t a mainstream language?” you can ask me. I guess it was a matter of investments, a big company behind, the resistance against the paradigm shift… Java is the main object oriented language today, and cleverly the language designer choose a syntax similar with C++. Smalltalk always was and is today a big lab beyond the common place.
If you don’t know Smalltalk, I invite you to take some time to know a free implementation, Squeak. I will try to present some features here, soon.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:39 am
If I’m not mistaken, Bill Joy said Java was a language designed to be programmed even for people that does not how to program.
The fact is that no language is such, but you can for sure make a language that reuses things that lousy programmers know. Java is like this. Starting on the syntax similar to C and to the extent that is not fully OO.
So, you have the scalability of OO and the hability to hire lousy programmers to work on lousy projects.
Smalltalk is far too different from anything else. Even if it is simpler (I don’t know enough ST to state so, but, IF it is…) is harder to do the change, because of the differences.
(try to teach a lousy programmer, how to do math in message order instead on operator precedence, after they already spent a lot of time complaining about math in his/her life)
But as far as I know ST, I agree that our world (the one in which us, developers live) would be far better if Steve Jobs had had a little more patience when he visited PARC.
May 14th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Guilherme, the Smalltalk language, as Logo, was designed to be programmed even for childrens! The SqueakLand is a proof of that. Alan Kay, who is one of many “The Guy” in my list, has a vision which in becomming true only today with the OLPC Project, where the computer is a extension of the human brain, to learn, to develop, to express yourself, in any age.
I think the majority of newcomers have this misundestanding about the real purpose. The first thing which we see is the strange syntax, the strange environment, but we forget to see that everything is connected with the initial vision: the computer working for the human development, and not the computers dictating the human behavior.
Read too The Early History of Smalltalk. in the future, if I will have enough talent…;-), I will demostrate better my point of view.
May 14th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Fabio, I see your point and understand. But you said it yourself
This is the real problem. This “detail” that is the switch of view is harder than learning Java on itself.
That is why we don’t see more ST and Logo Development around (which can both be seriously programmed, despite the popular belief), or, say, more Lisp, that is reasonably similar to Logo in many aspects.