7 ms·

Smalltalk Squeak 6.0

119 points by emme 4y ago

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
What is the block of code starting under the "THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS" line? Is that an easter egg of sorts that would show up if run inside Squeak?
- cwp 4y ago
  Not really an Easter egg, just the normal release process. That code basically sets up the GUI for the released image - sets up the menubar, opens and arranges windows, etc. The release notes at the top will get styled and appear in a window in the IDE.
musicale 4y ago
Shouldn't this be Squeak Smalltalk 6.0? I'm glad that Squeak continues to embrace the Smalltalk name, community, and history - and doesn't take the Pharo approach of trying to pretend that they aren't Smalltalk.
- xkriva11 4y ago
  No, it should not: A couple of years ago, we started this project called Squeak, which is simply not an attempt to give the world a free Smalltalk, but an attempt to give the world a bootstrapping mechanism for something much better than Smalltalk, and when you fool around Squeak, please, please, think of it from that standpoint. -- Alan Kay
  - jecel 4y ago
    But that "better than Smalltalk" would not be Squeak, so I still present the system to people as "Squeak Smalltalk". While the goal of Pharo is to encourage research even while breaking compatibility (possibly making it not Smalltalk at some point in the future), Squeak is way more conservative. The various SqueakFest events that happened were actually mostly about EToys used by children and teachers and at least some in the Squeak community have keeping that running a priority. Personally I do use Squeak to research future languages as Alan intended, and it is also a great tool for that.
    - xkriva11 4y ago
      I personally think that one reason why Alan lost his interrest in Squeak was partly based on the community that was too conservative and too much Smalltalk-80 oriented - while Smalltalk does not fit into his vision well already since 1976.
      - jecel 4y ago
        Alan wanted what eventually became EToys for his Apple projects. They looked into doing it in Java but figured that digging the old Apple Smalltalk-80 out of the trash bin and cleaning it up would be less effort. So we got Squeak. Then they did Etoys stuff at Disney and some other neat experiments. Then Alan moved on to 3D shared environments[1] and later to recreating personal computing in 20K lines of code[2]. The idea was to build it on top of Ian Piumarta's COLA[3][4] but to get something out the door they ended up using a stripped down version of Squeak instead. So moving on from Squeak is harder than Alan hoped. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS [2] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf [3] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdf [4] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2006003a_objmod.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2006003a_objmod.pdf
- igouy 4y ago
  > … trying to pretend… That used-to-be my feeling too. Now I have more appreciation of the amount of archaic baggage that is dragged into discussion once the label Smalltalk is attached :-)
- jecel 4y ago
  The title for https://squeak.org/ https://squeak.org/ is "Squeak/Smalltalk"
rbanffy 4y ago
May be better to point it to https://github.com/squeak-smalltalk/squeak-app/blob/squeak-trunk/release-notes/6.0 https://github.com/squeak-smalltalk/squeak-app/blob/squeak-t...
- jacknews 4y ago
  Indeed, I was going to ask if they were having a joke, posting in the style of release notes from 25 years ago.
  - cwp 4y ago
    This file is part of the build system, and the text is meant to be read within the Squeak IDE, so it's going to look a little weird on the web. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, there's a bunch of code for styling the text, opening and arranging windows, setting up the menu bar etc.
pjmlp 4y ago
Nice to see it still going. For those unaware, Squeak linage descends directly from the last Xerox Smalltalk-80 images before being bootstraped.
- kabdib 4y ago
  Don't know if it's true, but it makes a fun story: ST80 used reference counting with counts saturating at some low number (like 127), and of course there are problems collecting circular references. A comprehensive analysis of a modern image, with Xerox PARC lineage, discovered garbage that had been uncollected for 20-30 years.
  - Rochus 4y ago
    It is true, that there is uncollected garbage in the original Xerox ST80 image. I've built some tools to analyze the image and also a VM which can be interrupted at any time to analyze the current state of the image (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk). There are two zombie processes (OID 6662 and 19ba). There are also a couple of BlockContext and MethodContext which have a nil sender and a reference to an unknown method, but which are still referenced from somewhere (i.e. the collection is prevented, even with mark & sweep). E.g. OID 79a2 of class BinaryChoice. I have a full list if anybody is interested.
    - floren 4y ago
      It's things like this that always made me look a bit askance at Smalltalk. It feels a little like "Document_Final_FINAL_v3_(2).docx", a little like a dirty old whiteboard where you can still see outlines of notes from last year. Might not be a fair assessment, but as an outsider I've always felt this way about image-based systems.
      - Rochus 4y ago
        Deploying an application was always an adventure. You could never be completely sure that it didn't contain things it shouldn't.
guessbest 4y ago
Could a developer use Squeak as an emacs replacement?
- agumonkey 4y ago
  That's a thought that pops up regularly whenever I run into Pharo/Squeak. They seem to have a more homogeneous system from top to bottom. The graphical layer of emacs is really "small" and restricted.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  I have not seen Squeak (or other Smalltalk environments, e.g. Pharo) being used like and IDE, which is what I infer you mean by "developer... emacs replacement". It certainly seems possible and could potentially make for a great IDE foundation, I just haven't seen it done, other than the Glamorous Toolkit - https://gtoolkit.com https://gtoolkit.com
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Interesting statement, given that modern IDEs trace back to Lisp and Smalltalk graphical workstations.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      Clarification: I meant using those environments for other languages, like people do with emacs, which is what I inferred the person I responded to was asking.
- AlanYx 4y ago
  There is a Glamorous Toolkit (Pharo not Squeak) project called Lepiter that is conceptually similar in a lot of ways to org-roam and org-babel. It comes with support for working with Javascript and a couple other languages. That might be of interest depending on how you spend most of your emacs time. (I agree that in a dream alternate reality something like full-on emacs would have grown out of Smalltalk.)
- TheCondor 4y ago
Qem 4y ago
> Switches the default bytecode set to SistaV1. This lays the basis for a new generation of VM optimizations (Sista: Speculative Inlining Smalltalk Architecture). With Sista, blocks are represented by CompiledBlocks and instantiated as FullBlockClosures, the stability of which has been improved in the course of this switch (fixed bugs in FullBlockClosure >> #= and InstructionStream >> #scanForInstructionSequence:). Provides new encoding accessors. Nice to see Sista finally seeing the light of the day. Hope it will be available Pharo as well, by the next release. That's awesome!
- scroot 4y ago
  My understanding is that the optimizations haven't been implemented yet in the VM, but that this initial step is to enable the new bytecodes. Could be wrong.
  - jecel 4y ago
    The idea in sista is to do all fancy optimizations in the image by translating bytecodes to different bytecodes. The VM (called Cog, in this case) just has to translate the bytecodes to native binaries on demand. This requires new bytecodes, like unchecked fast primitive calls, so that sista can have Cog generate better binaries.
- protomyth 4y ago
  Is there a specification for the SistaV1 bytecodes?
  - jecel 4y ago
    This paper compares the "blue book style" bytecodes (also known as V3 bytecodes) with the new ones used by sista: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280793584_A_bytecode_set_for_adaptive_optimizations https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280793584_A_bytecod...
andrekandre 4y ago
> This is the first Squeak that supports high-resolution displays on all major platforms and offers a flexible UI scale factor through improved support for TrueType fonts. nice, been waiting for a while on that one
notorious-dto 4y ago
Lovely to see the new Squeak release on here. There are some really exciting new third party things happening too, such as a visual Smalltalk editor called Sandblocks. I made a demo of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnbSocgf-xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnbSocgf-xc Also check out https://Squeak.slack.com https://Squeak.slack.com for a nice discussion group.

119 points by emme 4y ago

What is the block of code starting under the "THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS" line? Is that an easter egg of sorts that would show up if run inside Squeak?

cwp 4y ago
Not really an Easter egg, just the normal release process. That code basically sets up the GUI for the released image - sets up the menubar, opens and arranges windows, etc. The release notes at the top will get styled and appear in a window in the IDE.

musicale 4y ago

Shouldn't this be Squeak Smalltalk 6.0? I'm glad that Squeak continues to embrace the Smalltalk name, community, and history - and doesn't take the Pharo approach of trying to pretend that they aren't Smalltalk.

xkriva11 4y ago
No, it should not: A couple of years ago, we started this project called Squeak, which is simply not an attempt to give the world a free Smalltalk, but an attempt to give the world a bootstrapping mechanism for something much better than Smalltalk, and when you fool around Squeak, please, please, think of it from that standpoint. -- Alan Kay
- jecel 4y ago
  But that "better than Smalltalk" would not be Squeak, so I still present the system to people as "Squeak Smalltalk". While the goal of Pharo is to encourage research even while breaking compatibility (possibly making it not Smalltalk at some point in the future), Squeak is way more conservative. The various SqueakFest events that happened were actually mostly about EToys used by children and teachers and at least some in the Squeak community have keeping that running a priority. Personally I do use Squeak to research future languages as Alan intended, and it is also a great tool for that.
  - xkriva11 4y ago
    I personally think that one reason why Alan lost his interrest in Squeak was partly based on the community that was too conservative and too much Smalltalk-80 oriented - while Smalltalk does not fit into his vision well already since 1976.
    - jecel 4y ago
      Alan wanted what eventually became EToys for his Apple projects. They looked into doing it in Java but figured that digging the old Apple Smalltalk-80 out of the trash bin and cleaning it up would be less effort. So we got Squeak. Then they did Etoys stuff at Disney and some other neat experiments. Then Alan moved on to 3D shared environments[1] and later to recreating personal computing in 20K lines of code[2]. The idea was to build it on top of Ian Piumarta's COLA[3][4] but to get something out the door they ended up using a stripped down version of Squeak instead. So moving on from Squeak is harder than Alan hoped. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS [2] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf [3] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdf [4] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2006003a_objmod.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2006003a_objmod.pdf
igouy 4y ago
> … trying to pretend… That used-to-be my feeling too. Now I have more appreciation of the amount of archaic baggage that is dragged into discussion once the label Smalltalk is attached :-)
jecel 4y ago
The title for https://squeak.org/ https://squeak.org/ is "Squeak/Smalltalk"

rbanffy 4y ago

May be better to point it to https://github.com/squeak-smalltalk/squeak-app/blob/squeak-trunk/release-notes/6.0 https://github.com/squeak-smalltalk/squeak-app/blob/squeak-t...

jacknews 4y ago
Indeed, I was going to ask if they were having a joke, posting in the style of release notes from 25 years ago.
- cwp 4y ago
  This file is part of the build system, and the text is meant to be read within the Squeak IDE, so it's going to look a little weird on the web. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, there's a bunch of code for styling the text, opening and arranging windows, setting up the menu bar etc.

pjmlp 4y ago

Nice to see it still going. For those unaware, Squeak linage descends directly from the last Xerox Smalltalk-80 images before being bootstraped.

kabdib 4y ago
Don't know if it's true, but it makes a fun story: ST80 used reference counting with counts saturating at some low number (like 127), and of course there are problems collecting circular references. A comprehensive analysis of a modern image, with Xerox PARC lineage, discovered garbage that had been uncollected for 20-30 years.
- Rochus 4y ago
  It is true, that there is uncollected garbage in the original Xerox ST80 image. I've built some tools to analyze the image and also a VM which can be interrupted at any time to analyze the current state of the image (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk). There are two zombie processes (OID 6662 and 19ba). There are also a couple of BlockContext and MethodContext which have a nil sender and a reference to an unknown method, but which are still referenced from somewhere (i.e. the collection is prevented, even with mark & sweep). E.g. OID 79a2 of class BinaryChoice. I have a full list if anybody is interested.
  - floren 4y ago
    It's things like this that always made me look a bit askance at Smalltalk. It feels a little like "Document_Final_FINAL_v3_(2).docx", a little like a dirty old whiteboard where you can still see outlines of notes from last year. Might not be a fair assessment, but as an outsider I've always felt this way about image-based systems.
    - Rochus 4y ago
      Deploying an application was always an adventure. You could never be completely sure that it didn't contain things it shouldn't.

guessbest 4y ago

Could a developer use Squeak as an emacs replacement?

agumonkey 4y ago
That's a thought that pops up regularly whenever I run into Pharo/Squeak. They seem to have a more homogeneous system from top to bottom. The graphical layer of emacs is really "small" and restricted.
andsoitis 4y ago
I have not seen Squeak (or other Smalltalk environments, e.g. Pharo) being used like and IDE, which is what I infer you mean by "developer... emacs replacement". It certainly seems possible and could potentially make for a great IDE foundation, I just haven't seen it done, other than the Glamorous Toolkit - https://gtoolkit.com https://gtoolkit.com
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Interesting statement, given that modern IDEs trace back to Lisp and Smalltalk graphical workstations.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    Clarification: I meant using those environments for other languages, like people do with emacs, which is what I inferred the person I responded to was asking.
AlanYx 4y ago
There is a Glamorous Toolkit (Pharo not Squeak) project called Lepiter that is conceptually similar in a lot of ways to org-roam and org-babel. It comes with support for working with Javascript and a couple other languages. That might be of interest depending on how you spend most of your emacs time. (I agree that in a dream alternate reality something like full-on emacs would have grown out of Smalltalk.)
TheCondor 4y ago

Qem 4y ago

> Switches the default bytecode set to SistaV1. This lays the basis for a new generation of VM optimizations (Sista: Speculative Inlining Smalltalk Architecture). With Sista, blocks are represented by CompiledBlocks and instantiated as FullBlockClosures, the stability of which has been improved in the course of this switch (fixed bugs in FullBlockClosure >> #= and InstructionStream >> #scanForInstructionSequence:). Provides new encoding accessors. Nice to see Sista finally seeing the light of the day. Hope it will be available Pharo as well, by the next release. That's awesome!

scroot 4y ago
My understanding is that the optimizations haven't been implemented yet in the VM, but that this initial step is to enable the new bytecodes. Could be wrong.
- jecel 4y ago
  The idea in sista is to do all fancy optimizations in the image by translating bytecodes to different bytecodes. The VM (called Cog, in this case) just has to translate the bytecodes to native binaries on demand. This requires new bytecodes, like unchecked fast primitive calls, so that sista can have Cog generate better binaries.
protomyth 4y ago
Is there a specification for the SistaV1 bytecodes?
- jecel 4y ago
  This paper compares the "blue book style" bytecodes (also known as V3 bytecodes) with the new ones used by sista: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280793584_A_bytecode_set_for_adaptive_optimizations https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280793584_A_bytecod...

andrekandre 4y ago

> This is the first Squeak that supports high-resolution displays on all major platforms and offers a flexible UI scale factor through improved support for TrueType fonts. nice, been waiting for a while on that one

notorious-dto 4y ago

Lovely to see the new Squeak release on here. There are some really exciting new third party things happening too, such as a visual Smalltalk editor called Sandblocks. I made a demo of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnbSocgf-xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnbSocgf-xc Also check out https://Squeak.slack.com https://Squeak.slack.com for a nice discussion group.