> I couldn't find a Smalltalk for the C-64 -- there may
> have been one, but I never managed to get my hands on it.
Probably not. I'm not aware of any Smalltalk implementations for
8-bit machines. Well then again maybe. Digitalk's first product was
a text based Smalltalk called Methods which ran on MS/DOS, I'm not
sure whether or not it actually ran on an 8088 or if it required a
PC/AT. It was called Methods because they were concerned about
trademark issues with Xerox. Their next product was Smalltalk/V, which
had graphics support. Alan Kay had seen Methods and convinced them
that they HAD to call it Smalltalk. (IIRC, Alan is related indirectly
by marriage to one of the Digitalk founders, but that might be my
senility kicking in). Alan also gave them a blurb for the back cover
of the Smalltalk/V manual "Smalltalk/V is the Smalltalk I Use -- Alan
Kay".
Although Smalltalk/V might have run on an original PC class machine, I
don't think that it did, I think that the V stood for Virtual as in
virtual memory and that they required an 80286 and handled swapping
themselves outside the OS (MS/DOS). Then Smalltalk/V for PM came out
which definitely required a 16-bit machine as it ran on OS/2, the DOS
version got rebranded as Smalltalk/V DOS.
Since Ed is reminiscing, I hope that you'll indulge me a bit.
One of my jobs back in the late 1980s/early 1990s was as a technical
liaison between IBM and Digitalk. I just pulled down one of my
treasured mementos from those days; a copy of the supplemental manual
for release 1.3 of Smalltalk/V PM, autographed by the entire team, and
given to me at the Digitalk Developers Conference. Alan Kay was
there where he gave a keynote. Among the inscriptions is "To the
least IBM-like IBMer I've ever met -- Happy OOPing - Alan Kay"
That is nice, can I have an autograph too
We had some conversations with the newly formed ParcPlace back in
those days about also doing Smalltalk-80 for OS/2 but they had no
interest in any platform with a word length smaller than 32-bits.
> Yes, Smalltalk does have a place in the list. It's a wonderful language,
And to an old Smalltalker there's quite a bit of evidence in Ruby that
it was a pretty big influence on Matz.
Well Dan Ingalls was one of the Squeak developers, and the first
Smalltalk implementer. He actually amazed Alan Kay when he showed him
an actuall implementation of the ideas which Alan had sketched out on
a single sheet of paper. If I'm not mistaken Dan's first Smaltalk
interpreter was written in Basic of all things, but he carried it
through many significant stages including Smalltalk-72, Smalltalk-76
and Smalltalk-80. The last I heard Dan was working for Sun on Java,
although still making contributions to Squeak.
Another main contributor to Squeak is/was John Maloney who's a bit too
young to be an original Smalltalk contributer. John was a student of
Alan Borning at the University of Washinton. Borning had built a
constraint-based simulation system in Smalltalk named Thinglab. John
(along with Bjorn Freeman-Benson) built a more generalized
constraint-based system called Thinglab II as doctoral students under
Borning.
And of course Alan Kay was involved as well, Squeak started while he
was an Apple Fellow, and continued with funding from Disney when he
became a Disney Fellow. I suspect that Alan's major role was as a
idea/spark generator, cheerleader and user of Squeak for his
multi-media simulation projects with kids.
My first encounter with Squeak came at OOPSLA many years ago. It was
about the time when Java was really starting to take the wind out of
Smaltalk's sails, probably more do to the fact that IBM and ParcPlace
Digitalk were charging big bucks for Smalltalk implementations while
Java could be had for free as long as you accepted Sun's licensing
terms.
As I recall, John Maloney invited me to a birds-of-a-feather session.
I walked into the room to find all these Smalltalkers huddled together
marveling over the constraint based Morphic MVC framework, and Dan's
music synthesis code. I had the impression that we were like the
Christians hiding out in the catacombs while the Romans(Java drinkers)
were having their orgies outside. <G>
···
On 3/15/07, Robert Dober <robert.dober@gmail.com> wrote:
It might be noteworthy though that the Squeak folks *are* the original
developers of Smalltalk.
> It might be noteworthy though that the Squeak folks *are* the original
> developers of Smalltalk.
Well Dan Ingalls was one of the Squeak developers, and the first
Smalltalk implementer. He actually amazed Alan Kay when he showed him
an actuall implementation of the ideas which Alan had sketched out on
a single sheet of paper. If I'm not mistaken Dan's first Smaltalk
interpreter was written in Basic of all things, but he carried it
through many significant stages including Smalltalk-72, Smalltalk-76
and Smalltalk-80. The last I heard Dan was working for Sun on Java,
although still making contributions to Squeak.
Another main contributor to Squeak is/was John Maloney who's a bit too
young to be an original Smalltalk contributer. John was a student of
Alan Borning at the University of Washinton. Borning had built a
constraint-based simulation system in Smalltalk named Thinglab. John
(along with Bjorn Freeman-Benson) built a more generalized
constraint-based system called Thinglab II as doctoral students under
Borning.
And of course Alan Kay was involved as well, Squeak started while he
was an Apple Fellow, and continued with funding from Disney when he
became a Disney Fellow. I suspect that Alan's major role was as a
idea/spark generator, cheerleader and user of Squeak for his
multi-media simulation projects with kids.
My first encounter with Squeak came at OOPSLA many years ago. It was
about the time when Java was really starting to take the wind out of
Smaltalk's sails, probably more do to the fact that IBM and ParcPlace
Digitalk were charging big bucks for Smalltalk implementations while
Java could be had for free as long as you accepted Sun's licensing
terms.
Ah I think you are spot on here, and it is nice to see how the open
source spiral worked. Smalltalk was closed, Java was free as in beer
than Smalltalk become open and now Java is as I learned in this
honored place.
Well there are major influences for that which have nothing to do with
Smalltalk but it is still nice to see.
As I recall, John Maloney invited me to a birds-of-a-feather session.
I walked into the room to find all these Smalltalkers huddled together
marveling over the constraint based Morphic MVC framework, and Dan's
music synthesis code. I had the impression that we were like the
Christians hiding out in the catacombs while the Romans(Java drinkers)
were having their orgies outside. <G>
This is all great stuff, I'll just post to the Squeak ML to subscribe
to the Ruby ML if they have any questions
