"An image is essentially a self-contained operating system that manages all the code for you, thanks to an easy-to-use IDE."
I'm not trying to be pedantic. I'm using general parlance to convey an idea, and the idea is essentially correct. And I'm hardly alone. GemTalk's own "Pharo, the collaborActive Book" defines image in much the same way: "A Smalltalk Image is your entire system. The Image includes all the tools required to interact, customize and add functionality to your system, so Smalltalk’s IDE is a very Integrated Development Environment." Let's not conflate /implementation/ with the Smalltalk UI experience. Of course, under the hood, Smalltalk is implemented using files. Duh! Today, Smalltalk is hosted on Windows or Mac OS or Linux or whatever other OS. But the original idea behind Smalltalk was that it would be a self-contained operating system; no host required. Think back to the Xerox PARC days: how did they host Smalltalk? Remember the Xerox Alto <https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Xerox_Alto> ? The reality is that the entire world is deeply entrenched on using files, much the same way the entire world is entrenched on using QWERTY keyboards and automobile steering wheels. Smalltalk has to live in this world, /so it makes accommodations/ for filein/fileout, Git, etc. Amber for the web has to live with HTML, CSS, and JS files. However, this does not alter the basic premise of my article. Smalltalk programming is a file-free abstraction. In order to enjoy this environment, you should mentally unfetter yourself from the traditional methodology of using file-based tools like Emacs, IntelliJ, and so on. *This is one of the main things holding back developers.* kilon.alios wrote > " > > *Files belong in the Stone Age"* > > *No they do not !* > > "Smalltalk is an *image-based* programming language." > > An image IS a file !!! > > "An image is essentially a self-contained operating system that manages > all > the code for you, thanks to > > *an easy-to-use IDE"* > > > *no its not!!! the vm is the virtual OS , the image is the OS libraries. > The VM also is a binary file separate from image and comes with a lot more > files , plugins and external libraries. * > > > *Look man you do more harm with these articles than you do good. This > Smalltalk hype is the worst of its kind and completely misses the point of > why Smalltalk is great. * > > > *It would even make zero diffirence if we were to break the image file > down > to much smaller files, it would still be a live coding enviroment. > Actually > you dont even need those files to be even binary , text source code files > can still store live state and be all about objects. * -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Stop-Thinking-in-Terms-of-Files-tp4865614p4865642.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
