> On 1 Mar, 2016, at 22:54, blake watson <dsblakewat...@gmail.com > <mailto:dsblakewat...@gmail.com>> wrote: > > >>Would you elaborate on this last comment about Smalltalk? > > Smalltalk, as a language, is very simple. Its syntax is, essentially, "object > message" embellished with keyword parameters, like "player attack: monster > with: sword using: slash". The environment, unfortunately, is cluttered, and > its version of Clojure's stack is stacks of DNU (do not understand) windows. > So I used Stephane Ducasse's "Squeak: Learn Programming With Robots" > (currently freely available online) which provides a sandbox where you can > test out the effects of various commands on "robots". (The "robots" here are > much like the "turtle" of yore.)
Just a side note, do not go for Squeak, try Pharo (a Squeak fork), the UI looks a to better, same goes for the IDE. Stef wrote several books about Pharo that can be freely found online. > >> What were some...bad aspects of Smalltalk? > > The worst thing about Smalltalk, in my experience, is that its learning curve > is sort of square-wave shaped. You can grasp, intellectually, the syntax in > literal minutes, and get comfortable with it in a few days. I assume that > ease was what inspired Mats, which is the height of irony, given the jungle > of Ruby syntax. But then it's often a huge leap to grasp the object library. > (Exception being the collection classes, which are a thing of beauty.) You > can build an Etoys app, again, in minutes. But when you've gone past what > Etoys will give you out of the box, you're must then go into the full > environment (and you can't really transition Etoys projects to regular > Smalltalk). Etoys is a novice tool, extending it is a master's task. There are Squeak By Example and Pharo By Example to try to tackle that. > Much like Lisp, expert Smalltalkers have absorbed so much about their beloved > tools, they can't always see the problems a beginner will have. +1 The kinda old community makes it a bit weird on that side. Expect people there to have done Smalltalk and Smalltalk only for the last 30 years. > Because it's a live environment, it's possible to get stacks of DNU windows, > which can be intimidating, and it's too easy to donk up your image (some > version of ST are better or worse in this regard), though fixing is pretty > simple. I think this is really to compare to most Lisp that also have a live environment where you can break things ;) First thing you learn though is that an image is “disposable”. I think the image based approach is a big issue when it comes to adoption, but I also think it’s the best debugging experience I have ever had. > It's not really a career path. Smalltalk has a strong emphasis on pedagogy, > but (creator) Alan Kay's focus is on education =generally=, i.e., using > computers to grasp math, physics, biology, etc. It has the same sort of > fallout as other great tools, in that while you =can= adapt easily to new > languages, you also end up missing the amazing place you came from. Pharo is trying to bring (back) Smalltalk to company. But I think the VM is the biggest constraint on this nowadays. My 2cts, Ben -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
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