Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Squeakware

Squeakware is a compact, customizable Squeak-built-in Linux. It's based on "Slax Linux". Click on the images to enlarge:

 

Monday, October 24, 2005

Reimplementing Eclipse?

If they really want to bring more Smalltalk experience into Eclipse I would vote for reimplementing it using a pure and dynamic OO language. ;)

Maybe they should have a look at Squeak - it's open source, not controlled by vendors and it's community is growing fast.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Seaside in O'Reilly article

Seaside (the Smalltalk web framework based on Squeak) is mentioned in an O'Reilly article:

"Web programming is an absolute disaster. After ten years of Java programming, we still haven't built a framework to get the Back button right. Web applications are stateless, so web applications scale better. But stateless applications are hard to build, and our frameworks do not give us much help. With most Java web frameworks, you basically build many unrelated pieces of the application using servlets or JSP, and then wire them together by manually saving objects that you need in temporary storage objects called sessions."

...

"Continuation-based web frameworks generally make web development much easier by simulating a stateful application."

...

"The best continuation-based frameworks are developed in dynamic languages. By far, the most robust is Seaside. It's a framework based on Squeak, a Smalltalk dialect. Seaside features fantastic debugging support--you can actually inspect, debug, and change your code from a browser"

I also like the Conclusion:

"In Beyond Java, I make the case that Java's not dead yet, but for the first time in nearly a decade, we're seeing compelling innovation happen beyond the borders of Java. These four technologies will play an important role in the near future. Watch them closely."

But I would not totally agree: in Smalltalk innovation happens all the time!

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Yet another frustrated developer...

Currently Java (especially J2EE) is getting too complex and this will frustrate more and more developers.

It is true that compared to Java you are much more productive - but Smalltalk is still the winner for developer productivity. It is also much easier to use - if you are willing to think in plain objects and messages. So leave the curly braces behind you and start by reading one of the free Smalltalk books.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Squeak homepage

The new Squeak homepage is up and running. Visit http://www.squeak.org and read more. It is based on SmallWiki.