[HN Gopher] Smalltalk-78 Xerox NoteTaker in-browser emulator
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Smalltalk-78 Xerox NoteTaker in-browser emulator
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-05-14 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (smalltalkzoo.thechm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (smalltalkzoo.thechm.org)
| jll29 wrote:
| Goldberg (1984) Smalltalk-80: The Interactive Programming
| Environment
| http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProg...
|
| Goldberg & Robson (1983) Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its
| Implementataion
| http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....
| reconnecting wrote:
| Very unexpected typeface for 1979 year. Thanks for sharing.
| trinix912 wrote:
| It's definitely very unique and proves that the Macintosh
| wasn't the first computer with nice typography ;)
| Beijinger wrote:
| "If you change the JavaScript code of the VM, it will immediately
| affect other users of this webpage. Please use responsibly."
|
| LOL
| xkriva11 wrote:
| A faster booting version (without Lively Kernel IDE):
| https://codefrau.github.io/Smalltalk78/
| xkriva11 wrote:
| A demonstration of on-the-fly modification of GUI internals in
| Smalltalk-78: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEz08IlcNMg
| rbanffy wrote:
| I once crashed Squeak by telling it that true:=false
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I think that or something like it was a rite of passage in
| our course using Smalltalk in college (number forgotten).
| "That couldn't possibly work...Oh, shit."
| igouy wrote:
| That doesn't happen with Dolphin DPRO.
|
| Optimized, like #ifTrue:ifFalse:
| whartung wrote:
| My first encounter with ST was at a Macintosh event at college
| in '85.
|
| And there was a fellow there with a Mac Plus, and he had the
| Apple ST image running on it.
|
| The Apple ST image was a descendant of the original Xerox
| image. This is the same image that became Squeak. Quite the
| heritage.
|
| The first the the guy showed me was how easy it was to change
| the width of the scroll bar. A simple tweak and, voila, the
| scroll bar changed. This worked particularly well because in
| the original UI, the scroll bar was a popup (unlike most are
| today).
|
| It was a dynamic demo to be sure to get that kind of reactivity
| to development. Made an impression to be sure.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I expected the Note Taker to have a much smaller screen. This is
| pretty unbelievable for a portable back then.
| pinewurst wrote:
| It had a 7 inch CRT with 640x480 resolution.
| sannysanoff wrote:
| I was always amazed that the smalltalk environment looks like a
| complete computer control - a paradise for a programmer and a
| hacker, and a creator. It's surprising that it didn't take off.
| Probably too much openness reflects the internal openness of the
| smalltalk creator to the world, but the outside world,
| unfortunately, did not reciprocate. Especially if we pay
| attention to Apple's success with completely closed devices,
| suitable only for content consumption.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Suitable only for content consumption - only if you define
| content narrowly as software/apps.
| criddell wrote:
| And when you use that narrow definition you have to remember
| that all those apps were made on Apple devices.
|
| A broader definition of content would include things you
| read, listen to, or watch and lots of writers, musicians, and
| film makers do a lot of their work on Apple hardware.
|
| The _suitable only for content consumption_ claim just
| doesn't hold up.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Smalltalk as platform did take off, that is why the famous GoF
| book uses Smalltalk and C++, even though many think Java is
| somehow on a book that predates it for about three years.
|
| All the IBM's Visual Age line of IDEs were written in
| Smalltalk, and in a way it was the ".NET" of OS/2.
|
| SOM (OS/2 COM) supported it natively, and one biggest
| difference to COM is that it supports meta-classes and proper
| inheritance, language agnostic.
|
| What made Smalltalk lose industry mindshare was exactly Java.
|
| When it came out, some major vendors, like IBM, pivoted all the
| way into Java, leaving Smalltalk behind.
|
| It is no accident that Eclipse was designed by some of the GoF
| authors, and it is initially a rewrite of Visual Age underlying
| platform from Smalltalk to Java.
|
| Eclipse even to this day has a Smalltalk like code browser.
|
| It wasn't only the IDEs, some famous Java libraries, like
| JUnit, started their life as Smalltalk libraries.
|
| Now as full OS, yes that never really took off.
|
| Note not all Smalltalk vendors switched to Java, that is why
| Dolphin and Cincom Smalltalk are still around.
| igouy wrote:
| > not all Smalltalk vendors switched to Java
|
| Cincom only acquired the VisualWorks Smalltalk software after
| ParcPlace had unsuccessfully rebranded as ObjectShare in
| response to the emergence of _free as in beer_ Java.
| smartmic wrote:
| A cute and up-to-date version of Smalltalk is Cuis [1]. I enjoyed
| playing around with it and developing small projects, but I will
| never get used to using a graphical VM and UI to develop ordinary
| programs. That's too far from the UNIX philosophy, which I
| respect and follow for good reason. Nevertheless, the curious
| hacker in me is attracted to the freshness and unconventionalness
| of Smalltalk as a unique programming experience.
|
| [1] https://cuis.st/
| linguae wrote:
| You might be interested in this paper: "Unix, Plan 9 and the
| Lurking Smalltalk" (https://www.humprog.org/~stephen/research/p
| apers/kell19unix-...)
|
| Cuis Smalltalk and related implementations are rather self-
| contained systems to the point they seemed walled off from the
| rest of the system, making it difficult to develop Smalltalk
| programs using external tools.
|
| However, there's something compelling about the idea of a
| Smalltalk (or Lisp) OS running on bare hardware, where
| everything runs in a single address space. I've been thinking
| about this for a few years, but I haven't had time to pursue
| these ideas. Some ideas from the 1994 paper "Sharing and
| Protection in a Single-Address-Space Operating System"
| (https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/opal.pdf) could be
| applicable to add some security to a Smalltalk OS.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Hence why I am already happy with half filled cup, when
| considering the existence of platforms like ChromeOS,
| Android, Meadow, Micro/CircuitPython, or Inferno, that seldom
| gets love from Plan 9 folks.
|
| It isn't the full thing, but apparently it is very hard to
| get mainstream interest in such approaches.
|
| Naturally this is not the same as using Smalltalk, or the
| other three Xerox PARC siblings, only partially.
|
| There were some efforts to run Squeak on the Raspberry PI I
| think, but eventually they runned out of steam.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/making-smalltalk-on-a-
| raspbe...
| jecel wrote:
| Squeak runs just fine on Linux computers (among many OSes)
| including the Raspberry Pi.
|
| The project you linked to recreated the original Xerox
| Smalltalk-80 on the Pi. It has a rather limited scope so I
| don't know if they ran out of steam or simply reached the
| end.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, but OP's point was about bare metal deployments, not
| on top of an existing OS, there are plenty of Smalltalks
| doing that already, all of the surviving ones.
| igouy wrote:
| > but I will never get used to using a graphical VM and UI to
| develop ordinary programs.
|
| I guess that by "ordinary programs" you mean command-line TUI
| programs.
|
| Being able to explore and inspect helps whether you are writing
| GUI or TUI.
|
| When you write Smalltalk code with a Smalltalk IDE, your
| actions have an implicit context. If you write Smalltalk code
| with a plain text editor, you must provide that missing
| context. Something like the fileOut format --
| !BenchmarksGame class methodsFor: 'initialize-release'!
|
| https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
| aperrien wrote:
| Is it possible to download this for offline use? Or to view the
| source code for it?
| znpy wrote:
| I looked left and right but it doesn't say anywhere what software
| is it using to run a smalltalk environment in the browser.
|
| I played with (Pharo) Smalltalk a bit in the past, it'd be nice
| to try it again in the browser.
| igouy wrote:
| Perhaps Lively Kernel?
|
| https://www.lively-kernel.org/presentations/
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(page generated 2025-05-14 23:00 UTC)