Hacker News Reader

Comment by islanderfun | Hacker News Reader

Coming from a place of ignorance, how does Smalltalk not integrate?

The default mode of interaction with Pharo and most other Smalltalk-based systems is not "launch an application which interacts on the console or opens some windows", but rather "launch Pharo, then inside the big Pharo window launch an application which interacts on the Pharo console or opens some windows inside the big Pharo window".

I think there are ways around this, but you may have to dig deep to find out how.

GNU Smalltalk is different: It doesn't have this traditional interaction mode. Many Smalltalk fans will probably find that that's a disadvantage.

> is not "launch an application which interacts on the console or opens some windows"

Actually, the standard end-user experience is to launch an application which interacts on the console or opens some windows.

(There'll be some system startup methods which define what happens when the image launches -- don't open the development environment windows, open the application windows).

A Smalltalk environment is practically its own operating system, complete with its own isolated UI/window manager, shells and desktop environment.

GNU Smalltalk is file based and integrates with Emacas...oh, nevermind.

There's Shampoo [1] but I'll be damned if I've ever been able to get it to work.

[1] http://dmitrymatveev.co.uk/shampoo/

I'm not really sure what you are claiming here. My experiences with Smalltalk ended 20 years ago with IBM Smalltalk and Digitalk Smalltalk/V. At that time, they both used the host operating system (Windows or OS/2) for UI widgets, windows, and such, and any applications you built in it could be packaged up to be launched as any other application. One could use such an application and have no particular sense of isolation beyond an application written in a more mainstream language (like C or C++). Have modern Smalltalks regressed in this regard?

Take a look at the Pharo intro on youtube, you'll see what I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLoXXFxU8lw

The images on the current website look very similar, so I don't it's changed much in this regard. This has been my typical experience with Smalltalk languages, with the exception of GNU Smalltalk whose specific goal is to integrate with POSIX instead of creating a walled garden.

Do you want to perhaps point to a specific time in that video, and compare it to a non-Smalltalk environment in a way that makes this purported isolation apparent, because I don't see what you mean.

I don't recognize whatever operating system the demo was done on, so if the Pharo system is not using native widgets I would not know, you'll have to explicitly state if this is the case.

The presenter is in the host operating system (Mac OSX) until the Pharo image is "up and running" at the 0:40 mark. Everything until the presenter opens up debian at 5:00 is custom Pharo based desktop / window management / even the mouse cursor if you look closely.

Then this just means that Pharo is one of the Smalltalks that does its own window management. I think Squeak might be the same. It is not a general characteristic of Smalltalks though, and certainly is not part of their essential nature. As I said, IBM Smalltalk used native widgets and windows, and had good interaction with the rest of the operating system.

I don't think you can draw a general conclusion about Smalltalk from a specific example, especially like this one.

Smalltalk does not use text-based source files, with object source code saved as part of a binary vm image. Smalltalk is completely incomparable with unix editors, version control, and developer tools, relying instead on integrated dev tools inside the vm. Because all development and tools are inside a monolithic image, it's not very practical for writing shell scripts

>Smalltalk does not use text-based source files, with object source code saved as part of a binary vm image.

This is a misleading claim often made by the author of this Medium article. Smalltalk code does reside in text files and the IDE keeps them. This is apart of the "image" that is also kept by the environment to enable faster loading and store state.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com