Smalltalker-80

Like the writer I'm also a 'boomer' still keeping connected to an older friend group using Facebook and Instagram. For Facebook, I use the plugin "FB Purity" to filter out the generated cr*p posts and force chronological order. It's shocking too see how few posts are left, by agressive algorithm filtering and FB then deciding that "You're all caught up", refusing to show more posts. So my FB time is about 20 seconds every day...

Yeah, the actual sizes are right there in the pictures, and never < 1 nm.

I think the lesson here is that you should always save (backup) your data on storage (services) and never on functional services. And this certainly includes Google, Apple and Microsoft Photos.

Totalle agree, I just googled it: "Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto heavily credits Smalltalk as the deepest structural inspiration behind Ruby’s object model. He combined Smalltalk’s beautiful object-oriented architecture and message-passing system with features from other languages to create a tool designed primarily for developer happiness." Including the closures and collection operations.

Yes, specifically buying options for the book are on this page: (recommended) https://www.jordanmechner.com/en/books/journals

I studied Scheme in CS around 1990, but also found it hard to grasp and to apply to real world problems. And all those parethesis, brrr... :) The idea that "everying is an object and classes are nothing special" is neat, but it does not fit the way people (okay, I) think about real world problems. So I stuck with Smalltalk/OOP and am stil there :-).

In 1979, I made a program called VisiBase in this BASIC. It's a visual database modeled after VisiCalc. That won me a joystick in at a competition by the local computer store. :-) Still have the source, that works in an Apple 2 emulator. It's 13 K in ASCII (untokenized).

Perhaps SmallJS, a Smalltalk built on top of JS, that can run in browsers and in Node.js (and also has async-await :-) : https://small-js.org

This announcement terrfies me. I dont think MS now has developers that are competent enough to reliably change core parts of Windows like the Explorer (taskbar). This plan will not only introduce bloat with reduced performance, but will also reduce core stability further. (Explorer has hanging issues since the april update). So please, please, please @Marcus. If you want to add stuff, please do it in side apps. Leave the core alone, that's above your ability currently. For the core please only focus on bug fixing and removing bloat again.

A was waiting for the part where he slides his little wafer chip into an ASML High NA EUV...

I've downloaded the entire thing a while back for nostalgia sake. And I am (of course) the proud owner of a physical copy of the "Smalltalk" issue :-) https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08

The appeal of having a very simple, base syntax and almost everything in the library / primitives, would be that code is always easy to read and write, also on the 'reflection' level, where most languages have specific keywords that cannot be used 'first class' with the rest of the language. E.g: Types next to class objects or operator overloading, look at Swift.. (Of course the complexity of a full working system (library) does not disappear in Smalltalk, it's just easier to read and modify. :)

I prefer the postcard ;-) https://richardeng.medium.com/syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fa...

Cool, I'm going to put this disclaimer in my work email signature. So I'm never accountable for any mistakes.

I have this stored locally, of course. And re-bought one physical issue from 1981, that defined computer interaction and programming as we know it today. Say my name... :-) https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08

I did mean these, very recent promises (vaporware at this moment), without satire. https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/03/20/our-com...

Yes, and the hubris sting-of-death was UWP. They tried to make Windows into a mobile OS, severely restricting the alowed actions of programs, including strict certification to be able to run them (elsewhere). Of course nobody went for this and UWP died a quiet death. Recently there are signs that MS is trying to go back to making products that users actualle want (Win11 reverts). We'll see...

Mostly solid scientific work, this ;)

Totally agree the only viewing methods in isolation, is less valuable than viewing the methods around it "for free". Indeed the methods in my classes are caryfully ordered, to keep ones that are used together on the source together. (And SmallJS is file based)

Imo, the problem with the 4-pane browsers are: 1 - The left-most 'package' pane is a flat list. And there are 10K + classes in e.g. Pharo. There are 900+ (!) packages in Pharo, in the pane, so its not easy to scroll through. This is solved 'manually' by have a hierarchical naming of packages. I think this pane should just have tree view. 2 - When developing an app, you may be working on classes in multiple packages. You want to have 'project' view with a simple way of switching between them, without having 10+ system browser windows open, like shown in the article. Dolphin Smalltalk has implemented this concept. Shameless plug: SmallJS (https://small-js.org) has these too..

Not if they're made by Anthropic...

Yep, there's a lot of (continuing) economical damage and still a lot of new immigrants every week. I think some time still needs to pass before Brexit politicians dare to change their stance, now confronted with the results of their choice. In the mean time, Brexit rules are quietly being undone without losing face too much. See the EU-UK trade deals from May 2025.

Agreed. I'm over 50, so I'm 'allowed' to use FB ;-), for those few posts of the last remaining family and friends there. Using FBP, I only see new posts of friends in chronological order. But FB still f*cks you, because it does not show all updates of everyone. When the algo decides you've had enough, you simply reach the 'end' of your feed. Well when FB, sessions keep getting shorter and shorter... There are some EU laws in the making that might change things, though.

Thechnically cool, but ToS state: "Misuse of Service Restrictions - Purpose Restriction: The Service is intended for video viewing and sharing, not as a general-purpose, cloud-based file storage service." So they can rightfully delete your files.

Can't wait for browser support for this... ;-)

Yeah, that Algol code is not very pretty :-). I'm sticking with my namesake from 1980...

Ah, Scheme was part of a programming language course, studying CS in ~ 1990. We students struggled to match all the parenthesis on our VT100 terminals. And to understand the intended purpose of the functions, which are not attached to modules or classes (without macro's)..

Next to a book on 6502 assembly, you can google "apple 2 original system manual" and download it. I contains ROM assembly source code and schematics.

Was thinking that too.. :)

Ah how silly of me, that woud make it 28 bytes. (I had the nagging feeling I was missing something :-) And promotions are also not covered by this...