Why I Am Learning Smalltalk

Have I mentioned that my latest enthusiasm is Smalltalk? It’s a good fit for what I want to do with web development, and Seaside is the application platform that dots the i‘s on all of the requirements on my web app wish list:

• Easy statefullness
• Introspection
• Live image
• Fast
• No HTML
• No templates

There are quite a few fine Smalltalk distributions, but I’m familiar with these: Cincom VisualWorks and Squeak Smalltalk. Since Squeak is free and there are many Squeak resources, including Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots, I’m dipped my toe into the water at Squeak.org. Squeak runs on OS X, Windows, and Linux, and it’s free.

The first time you work with Smalltalk, you may find yourself feeling like a stranger in a strange land. You don’t work with source files; you work with an image, which is like a living piece of code. You can change it while it’s running. Very cool stuff. Cooler than Ruby, to my mind, and I love Ruby.

When I first saw a demo of Seaside, I felt a shock of recognition: Seaside is the framework I might have built if I were smarter, more knowledgeable, and less lazy. Seaside isn’t the new kid on the web framework block. Avi Bryant and Julian Fitzell released Seaside in 2002, 2 years before DHH released Rails.

Here are a few Smalltalk resources for the intrepid adventurers among you.

Smalltalk.org
Squeak Smalltalk
Seaside Framework
WebVelocity with Seaside
Cincom VisualWorks Smalltalk
GNU Smalltalk
Croquet Consortium
OLPC Etoys

There are many free Smalltalk books available from Stephane Ducasse. Randal Schwarz, widely respected for his contributions to Perl (and the Schwarzian Transform) has become a persuasive Smalltalk advocate in his blog methodsandmessages.vox.com.

I believe that Smalltalk will gain increasing mind share in the coming years. Five years from now the general programming population will be thronging to Smalltalk courses in the local community college, as they are clamoring for PHP and Rails courses today.

Tagged as: good parts, Smalltalk, Squeak