[Newbies] Squeak/Smalltalk - Java

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 05.03.2009, at 14:34, Ralph Johnson wrote:

>> I've noted a trend with two big Squeak apps, Alice and Sophie,  
>> going to Java
>> for their next major release: Why is this so?
>
> I don't think Alice was ever in Squeak.

The original Alice was implemented in C and Python, with user scripts  
written in a case-insensitive variant of Python. That Alice core was  
ported to Squeak (called "Wonderland", using the Balloon3D graphics  
engine). This was never officially part of the Alice project, but of  
course the Alice and Squeak folks regularly exchanged ideas.

Alice 2.0 is implemented in Java. User scripts were not written in  
Java but using tile-scripts (similar to Etoys). You can turn on a  
switch to show punctuation on tiles to make it look more like a  
textual syntax.

Now Alice 3.0 is going to expose Java programming directly, to appeal  
to CS1 courses.

- Bert -