In the Spring of 2025, I taught a course about interactive programming environments to a small group of students. For various reasons, I have to take down the official web page for that site, which includes slides that may be of interest to people who care about these things. I have therefore chosen to publish those slides on Lost Bits under a Creative Commons License.

https://lostbits.net/blog/interactive-programming-environments.html

If you are interested in such things, check it out!
#lisp #smalltalk #squeak #forth #emacs

In the Spring of 2025, I taught a course about interactive programming environments to a small group of students. For various reasons, I have to take down the official web page for that site, which includes slides that may be of interest to people who care about these things. I have therefore chosen to publish those slides on Lost Bits under a Creative Commons License.

https://lostbits.net/blog/interactive-programming-environments.html

If you are interested in such things, check it out!
#lisp #smalltalk #squeak #forth #emacs

Back to the future: the story of Squeak, a practical Smalltalk written in itself [pdf] (1997)

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr1997001_backto.pdf

#HackerNews #BackToTheFuture #Squeak #Smalltalk #ProgrammingHistory #TechDocs #1997

#Unison is a really interesting programming language - one of the most novel I've seen in recent years https://www.unison-lang.org/docs/quickstart/

It's hard to describe, but to me it feels like some modern blend of ideas from #Haskell, #Erlang, #Smalltalk and #OCaml. I hope that it will manage to gain some traction and that I'll be able to play a bit more with it down the road.

#Unison is a really interesting programming language - one of the most novel I've seen in recent years https://www.unison-lang.org/docs/quickstart/

It's hard to describe, but to me it feels like some modern blend of ideas from #Haskell, #Erlang, #Smalltalk and #OCaml. I hope that it will manage to gain some traction and that I'll be able to play a bit more with it down the road.

Very much enjoyed (finally) reading this today (while procrastinating from other things I was supposed to be doing). The paper is in PDF form, here:

https://akkartik.name/akkartik-convivial-20200607.pdf

Title is "Bicycles for the Mind Have to Be See-Through".

Anyone with a passing interest in #lisp, #forth, or #smalltalk has some very interesting material to chew on. And the @malleablesys people too, but I presume they've seen it over on the forum, where I first became aware of it myself.

The idea as I understood it is, to quote the paper, to "prioritize comprehension over ease of authorship". And bring that to the whole software stack, and see how far you can push it.

@akkartik where is the whole project at now, how is it all going? I only eyeballed the source code, but the rationale behind the whole thing was very interesting.

One more quote from the end:

"Creating an entire new stack may seem like tilting at windmills, but the mainstream Software-Industrial Complex suffers from obvious defects even in the eyes of those who don’t share our philosophy."

Very much enjoyed (finally) reading this today (while procrastinating from other things I was supposed to be doing). The paper is in PDF form, here:

https://akkartik.name/akkartik-convivial-20200607.pdf

Title is "Bicycles for the Mind Have to Be See-Through".

Anyone with a passing interest in #lisp, #forth, or #smalltalk has some very interesting material to chew on. And the @malleablesys people too, but I presume they've seen it over on the forum, where I first became aware of it myself.

The idea as I understood it is, to quote the paper, to "prioritize comprehension over ease of authorship". And bring that to the whole software stack, and see how far you can push it.

@akkartik where is the whole project at now, how is it all going? I only eyeballed the source code, but the rationale behind the whole thing was very interesting.

One more quote from the end:

"Creating an entire new stack may seem like tilting at windmills, but the mainstream Software-Industrial Complex suffers from obvious defects even in the eyes of those who don’t share our philosophy."

This is actually discussing #smalltalk's influence on #ruby, but it works pretty well as a smalltalk introduction, too!

https://noelrappin.com/blog/2025/11/ruby-and-its-neighbors-smalltalk/

#programming #history (sadly, cause smalltalk itself is not much used today)

This is actually discussing #smalltalk's influence on #ruby, but it works pretty well as a smalltalk introduction, too!

https://noelrappin.com/blog/2025/11/ruby-and-its-neighbors-smalltalk/

#programming #history (sadly, cause smalltalk itself is not much used today)

Ruby and Its Neighbors: Smalltalk

https://noelrappin.com/blog/2025/11/ruby-and-its-neighbors-smalltalk/

#HackerNews #Ruby #Smalltalk #Programming #Language #Tech #Blog

Want to think different? Have a look at that somewhat WO like #Smalltalk web framework, Seaside: https://github.com/SeasideSt/Seaside

Want to think different? Have a look at that somewhat WO like #Smalltalk web framework, Seaside: https://github.com/SeasideSt/Seaside

Published as a Xerox PARC technical report, this 1982 dissertation explored the idea of dynamic, interactive digital books and described an experimental system in Smalltalk. At the time it was cutting edge research we now take for granted.

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/SCG-82-1_Searching_for_Information_in_a_Dynamic_Book_198202.pdf

#retrocomputing #ebooks #smalltalk

@deech Debug-friendliness has moved to the top of my list of criteria for tech adoption ever since I used #Smalltalk seriously. The only tech I use a lot in spite of it being hostile to debugging is #Guix - and the reason is that it such a great help with debugging other software.

@marick

Some Smalltalk about Ruby Loops

https://tech.stonecharioteer.com/posts/2025/ruby-loops/

#HackerNews #Smalltalk #RubyLoops #ProgrammingTechniques #CodeDiscussion

The Unix Executable as a Smalltalk Method (and Unix-Smalltalk Unification) [pdf]

https://programmingmadecomplicated.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/onward25-jakubovic.pdf

#HackerNews #Unix #Executable #Smalltalk #Method #Unix-Smalltalk #Unification #Programming #PDF

The Unix Executable as a Smalltalk Method (and Unix-Smalltalk Unification) [pdf]

https://programmingmadecomplicated.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/onward25-jakubovic.pdf

#HackerNews #Unix #Executable #Smalltalk #Method #Unix-Smalltalk #Unification #Programming #PDF