<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi all -<div><br></div><div>Today while looking for an old reference to Rosetta Smalltalk, I came across this site:</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="http://rosettacode.org">http://rosettacode.org</a></div><div><br></div><div>In their own words, "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: -webkit-sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; ">The idea is to present solutions to the same task in as many different languages as possible, to demonstrate how languages are similar and different, and to aid a person with a grounding in one language in learning another. Rosetta Code currently has 278 tasks, and covers 135 languages, though we do not have solutions to every task in every language."</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">It seemed to me that some of the Smalltalk examples are not as nice as they might be. For instance the very first thing I looked at was the Ackermann function which is written as a block...</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><pre class="smalltalk highlighted_source" style="font-family: monospace; padding-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 1em; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: dashed; border-right-style: dashed; border-bottom-style: dashed; border-left-style: dashed; border-top-color: rgb(47, 111, 171); border-right-color: rgb(47, 111, 171); border-bottom-color: rgb(47, 111, 171); border-left-color: rgb(47, 111, 171); color: black; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); line-height: 1.1em; position: static; z-index: auto; ">|<span class="re3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); ">ackermann</span>|<br><span class="re6">ackermann</span> <span class="sy0">:=</span> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">[</span> :<span class="re5">n</span> :<span class="re5">m</span> |<br> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">(</span><span class="re5">n</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="re5">0</span><span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">)</span> ifTrue: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">[</span> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">(</span><span class="re5">m</span> + <span class="re5">1</span><span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">)</span> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">]</span><br> ifFalse: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">[</span><br> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">(</span><span class="re5">m</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="re5">0</span><span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">)</span> ifTrue: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">[</span> <span class="re5">ackermann</span> value: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">(</span><span class="re5">n</span>-<span class="re5">1</span><span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">)</span> value: <span class="re5">1</span> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">]</span><br> ifFalse: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">[</span><br> <span class="re5">ackermann</span> value: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">(</span><span class="re5">n</span>-<span class="re5">1</span><span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">)</span><br> value: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">(</span> <span class="re5">ackermann</span> value: <span class="re5">n</span><br> value: <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">(</span><span class="re5">m</span>-<span class="re5">1</span><span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">)</span> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">)</span><br> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">]</span><br> <span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">]</span><br><span class="br0" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); ">]</span>.<br></pre></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">To begin with, this is cluttered with value:value:; it includes redundant parentheses which don't belong in an illustration of the language; finally, it will not run in Smalltalks that do not allow recursive blocks. Seems to me it might be more illustrative as an Integer method that will run in any Smalltalk, that runs faster too, and looks cleaner to me...</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><div><Integer> ack: n "The first parameter m is the receiver, self, in this Ackermann method"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>self = 0 ifTrue: [^ n+1].</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>self > 0 ifTrue:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>[n = 0 ifTrue: [^ self-1 ack: 1].</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> n > 0 ifTrue: [^ self-1 ack: (self ack: n-1)] ]</div><div><div>"</div><div>0 ack: 0 ==> 1</div><div>3 ack: 4 ==> 125</div><div>"</div></div><div><br></div><div>Anyway, I thought Smalltalk's representation on that site could use a little QA, and that folks on this list might have a good time playing TerseMan. I could imagine the Squeak solutions being an interesting area in our Wiki, both as a staging area for such a project, and as a possibly interesting collection of TerseMan discussions (terseness is great fun, but not always the ideal). A comment on the last line might point to our Wiki which might gain some new Squeak users, and would encourage checking with us before anyone overwrites our contributions.</div></span></font></div></body></html>