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Learning Smalltalk - Part 4

Byte Magazine, August 1981 cover with the actual balloon launch at PARC that celebrated the release of Smalltalk

Smart ideas from Smalltalk, forgotten and waiting to be re-invented
  • The focus on message passing in OO programming.  Watch InfoQ interview with Ralph Johnson and Joe Armstrong on the State of OOP

  • A language defined only with very simple rules, with the underlying concepts that are *simple* and *uniformly* applied.
     The underling principle is that: If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual.

  • No separation between the language and the IDE that's a live universe of Smalltalk objects that can be accessed and  changed

    Nowadays the meaning of IDE degenerated to: a set of tools started by a common launcher or bundled together into one single top window.

    In Smalltalk  Integrated Environment meant that the programming environment was part of the executed program and vice versa.

  • The classes/system browser is optimized to read and understand existing code, write short methods with the focus on the public signature/message/protocol and class hierarchy & namespaces

    While modern IDE have file oriented code editors optimize to write new code and limited objects browsers.This different mindset highlight the implied misunderstanding of OO



The complete series:
- Learning Smalltalk - Part 1 - Learning Smalltalk why ?
- Learning Smalltalk - Part 2 - Some alive and kicking Smalltalk free implementations
- Learning Smalltalk - Part 3 - Innovative ideas originated from Smalltak
- Learning Smalltalk - Part 4 - Smart ideas from Smalltalk, forgotten and waiting to be re-invented
- Learning Smalltalk - Part 5 - Inspiring ideas from the Smalltalk community




Print | posted @ mercoledì 31 agosto 2011 01:31

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