Smalltalk runtime in the browser

by andreiursan • 13 years ago

138 33 13 years ago

andreiursan2• 13 years ago

finally, an easy way to learn smalltalk http://amber-lang.net/learn.html

aidos• 13 years ago

I get an unexpected character on line 1 message when I push the doit button on an iPhone. Boooo. Oh well, iPhone normally isn't great for learning languages on anyway.

lelf• 13 years ago

It's not only iPhone

drdaeman• 13 years ago

You have to select "ProfStef next." text on the page, in a manner browser's document.getSelection would find those (not sure whenever this is possible on iPhone).

I think, given this is a newbie-oriented tutorial, the alert should be more helpful, like "empty program, select some text first!" instead of unexpected null character.

andreiursan2• 13 years ago

I didn't check it from iPhone. From my desktop (iMac) I only place the cursor on the "ProfStef next." line and press Ctrl-d or press the DoIt or PrintI - I didn't need to select the text and everything worked.

xradionut• 13 years ago

Squeak is a easy way to learn Smalltalk.

kaonashi2• 13 years ago

Parse error on line 1 column 44 : Unexpected character null

ToastyMallows• 13 years ago

You have to select the text and hit the button.

girvo• 13 years ago

Holy heck that is cool.

I begin to wonder if this is the way a Smalltalk or Lisp-machine-like live environments can be resurrected for 2013?

I mean, Javascript and the Browser are somewhat similar, but this takes it to another level.

seanmcdirmid2• 13 years ago

Using this, I found myself back in CSE 341 at UW using Smalltalk VisualWorks. Nothing has changed a bit, and the world has moved on.

Also, directness isn't liveness. But then they don't define live at all, so it could mean anything.

ithkuil3• 13 years ago

The world has changed in many ways, and there is plenty of that these exciting shiny things to play with, if you wish. Yet too many great ideas were abandoned because, among other reasons, they were too ahead of their times. I welcome efforts like this, because they let these ideas to be known to the current generation, not just as history, but as something that fits into today's environment, tooling and goals.

How many attempts to create the perfect ide for programming the web, in the web, and yet we keep the distinction of what is source "file" and what is the app being run, and how you debug it. Smalltalk and it's developing environment made blurred this boundary, and might be a great inspiration if not a practical solution.

e12e2• 13 years ago

Also take a look at:

  http://http://lively-kernel.org/

One noteable feature is save-via-webdav.

zeckalpha• 13 years ago

That should just be http://lively-kernel.org/

e12e2• 13 years ago

Whops, sorry about that.

gosub2• 13 years ago

This is the "lisp machine" equivalent:

http://alex.nisnevich.com/ecmachine/

BruceM2• 13 years ago

That's nothing like Symbolics Genera. Genera is amazing in so many ways, even how it does command line completion.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_(operating_system) for some basic info on what a Lisp Machine was like...

gosub2• 13 years ago

I didn't mean equivalent to a lisp machine, just equivalent to the submission in the lisp machine direction.

mietek2• 13 years ago

Can you go into a little more detail, or point me to a more in-depth personal account of using Genera?

lispm• 13 years ago

I would not put every Lisp implementation into the context of a Lisp Machine with a Lisp operating system. A Lisp in a browser with some features like files and threads is something different from a computer, a piece of hardware, which actually boots into Lisp. Also Genera, the OS of the Symbolics Lisp Machine, is a complex piece of software, which was based on the work of many person-years. It was also developed over a decade and sold commercially in several releases for several generations of hardware.

As such a Lisp environment in a browser is a nice achievement and it looks like a fun project. Naturally it is far away from a really sophisticated system like Genera. Still, it is interesting to write something like this small project. Though I would prefer something which would be compatible with Common Lisp and would allow reuse in that direction.

If people would want to know more about Genera, the operating system, the Wikipedia article is a good source. If there is something missing, we should add it.

Kalman Reti (who worked for Symbolics for many years) gave a presentation: http://kvardek-du.kerno.org/2013/03/kalman-reti-on-lisp-mach...

bionerd• 13 years ago

So many awesome things to try out and so little time...

I'm really excited to see such great ideas of the past being resurrected like that. Things like Lisp machines and Smalltalk environment are still revolutionary and have much to contribute to the technology of the present.

It's a shame really that they almost died out. I could only guess what were the reasons for that but it's great to see efforts trying to bring them back to the future where they belong.

mtrimpe2• 13 years ago

The Mill CPU [1] that was discussed a while ago is quite close to being the perfect architecture for a Lisp though, so hopefully many of other parts of these ideas will also come back in even more impressive forms.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGw-cy0ylCc

cwzwarich• 13 years ago

Why is the Mill CPU good for Lisp? The Mill requires the compiler to schedule for cache and memory latency, but I would expect this to be difficult to predict for Lisp programs.

dysoco• 13 years ago

Curious considering my comment yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6214917

methehack• 13 years ago

If this is solid, would be cool to see firebase (or similar) integration.

Smalltalk runtime in the browser

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