Getting Started with Celtic Coins – Crude and Barbarous, or Just Different? (collectingancientcoins.co.uk)

A cute and up-to-date version of Smalltalk is Cuis [1]. I enjoyed playing around with it and developing small projects, but I will never get used to using a graphical VM and UI to develop ordinary programs. That's too far from the UNIX philosophy, which I respect and follow for good reason. Nevertheless, the curious hacker in me is attracted to the freshness and unconventionalness of Smalltalk as a unique programming experience.

[1] https://cuis.st/

linguae · 2h ago

You might be interested in this paper: "Unix, Plan 9 and the Lurking Smalltalk" (https://www.humprog.org/~stephen/research/papers/kell19unix-...)

Cuis Smalltalk and related implementations are rather self-contained systems to the point they seemed walled off from the rest of the system, making it difficult to develop Smalltalk programs using external tools.

However, there's something compelling about the idea of a Smalltalk (or Lisp) OS running on bare hardware, where everything runs in a single address space. I've been thinking about this for a few years, but I haven't had time to pursue these ideas. Some ideas from the 1994 paper "Sharing and Protection in a Single-Address-Space Operating System" (https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/opal.pdf) could be applicable to add some security to a Smalltalk OS.

pjmlp · 2h ago

Hence why I am already happy with half filled cup, when considering the existence of platforms like ChromeOS, Android, Meadow, Micro/CircuitPython, or Inferno, that seldom gets love from Plan 9 folks.

It isn't the full thing, but apparently it is very hard to get mainstream interest in such approaches.

Naturally this is not the same as using Smalltalk, or the other three Xerox PARC siblings, only partially.

There were some efforts to run Squeak on the Raspberry PI I think, but eventually they runned out of steam.

https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/making-smalltalk-on-a-raspbe...

jecel · 1h ago

Squeak runs just fine on Linux computers (among many OSes) including the Raspberry Pi.

The project you linked to recreated the original Xerox Smalltalk-80 on the Pi. It has a rather limited scope so I don't know if they ran out of steam or simply reached the end.

sannysanoff · 2h ago

I was always amazed that the smalltalk environment looks like a complete computer control - a paradise for a programmer and a hacker, and a creator. It's surprising that it didn't take off. Probably too much openness reflects the internal openness of the smalltalk creator to the world, but the outside world, unfortunately, did not reciprocate. Especially if we pay attention to Apple's success with completely closed devices, suitable only for content consumption.

pjmlp · 2h ago

Smalltalk as platform did take off, that is why the famous GoF book uses Smalltalk and C++, even though many think Java is somehow on a book that predates it for about three years.

All the IBM's Visual Age line of IDEs were written in Smalltalk, and in a way it was the ".NET" of OS/2.

SOM (OS/2 COM) supported it natively, and one biggest difference to COM is that it supports meta-classes and proper inheritance, language agnostic.

What made Smalltalk lose industry mindshare was exactly Java.

When it came out, some major vendors, like IBM, pivoted all the way into Java, leaving Smalltalk behind.

It is no accident that Eclipse was designed by some of the GoF authors, and it is initially a rewrite of Visual Age underlying platform from Smalltalk to Java.

Eclipse even to this day has a Smalltalk like code browser.

It wasn't only the IDEs, some famous Java libraries, like JUnit, started their life as Smalltalk libraries.

Now as full OS, yes that never really took off.

Note not all Smalltalk vendors switched to Java, that is why Dolphin and Cincom Smalltalk are still around.

igouy · 36m ago

> not all Smalltalk vendors switched to Java

Cincom only acquired the VisualWorks Smalltalk software after ParcPlace had unsuccessfully rebranded as ObjectShare in response to the emergence of free as in beer Java.

badc0ffee · 2h ago

Suitable only for content consumption - only if you define content narrowly as software/apps.

criddell · 20m ago

And when you use that narrow definition you have to remember that all those apps were made on Apple devices.

A broader definition of content would include things you read, listen to, or watch and lots of writers, musicians, and film makers do a lot of their work on Apple hardware.

The suitable only for content consumption claim just doesn’t hold up.

jll29 · 4h ago

Goldberg (1984) Smalltalk-80: The Interactive Programming Environment http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProg...

Goldberg & Robson (1983) Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementataion http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....

xkriva11 · 3h ago

A demonstration of on-the-fly modification of GUI internals in Smalltalk-78: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEz08IlcNMg

rbanffy · 3h ago

I once crashed Squeak by telling it that true:=false

Jtsummers · 1h ago

I think that or something like it was a rite of passage in our course using Smalltalk in college (number forgotten). "That couldn't possibly work...Oh, shit."

igouy · 22m ago

That doesn't happen with Dolphin DPRO.

Optimized, like #ifTrue:ifFalse:

xkriva11 · 4h ago

A faster booting version (without Lively Kernel IDE): https://codefrau.github.io/Smalltalk78/

rbanffy · 3h ago

I expected the Note Taker to have a much smaller screen. This is pretty unbelievable for a portable back then.

pinewurst · 2h ago

It had a 7 inch CRT with 640x480 resolution.

reconnecting · 4h ago

Very unexpected typeface for 1979 year. Thanks for sharing.

trinix912 · 1h ago

It’s definitely very unique and proves that the Macintosh wasn’t the first computer with nice typography ;)

aperrien · 2h ago

Is it possible to download this for offline use? Or to view the source code for it?

znpy · 1h ago

I looked left and right but it doesn't say anywhere what software is it using to run a smalltalk environment in the browser.

I played with (Pharo) Smalltalk a bit in the past, it'd be nice to try it again in the browser.

igouy · 17m ago

Perhaps Lively Kernel?

https://www.lively-kernel.org/presentations/

Beijinger · 4h ago

"If you change the JavaScript code of the VM, it will immediately affect other users of this webpage. Please use responsibly."

LOL

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Smalltalk-78 Xerox NoteTaker in-browser emulator

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