<h1>Welcome!</h1>
When Smalltalk *was created>http://www.smalltalk.org/smalltalk/TheEarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk_Abstract.html* more than 35 years ago it <b>defined the term object orientation</b> and is the first language in which <b>everything is built from objects</b>. Smalltalk is deeply inspired by ideas from especially *Simula>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula*, *Sketchpad>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad* and *Lisp>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_programming_language* and even today Smalltalk sets the bar for object oriented dynamically strongly typed interactive languages and environments.
You may be familiar with other open source languages like *Ruby>http://www.ruby-lang.org* or *Python>http://www.python.org*, but Squeak takes these concepts much, much further offering a true uniform fully reflective environment - real live objects.
<blockquote><i> "The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet. Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into bad defacto standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations of incomplete ideas." - Alan Kay</i></blockquote>
Our diverse and very active community includes teachers, students, business application developers, researchers, music performers, interactive media artists, web developers and many others. We use Squeak for <b>a wide variety of computing tasks</b>, ranging from *child education>/Features/Education* to innovative *research>/Features/Research* in computer science, or creation of advanced dynamic web sites using the highly acclaimed continuation based *Seaside>http://www.seaside.st* framework.
The Squeak kernel sports: - A largely Smalltalk-80 and ANSI Smalltalk X3J20 compatible *language>Smalltalk* and base libraries - A fast *virtual machine>/Features/The Squeak VM* written in a subset of Squeak - A bit identical compact 32-bit direct pointer object memory - An efficient incremental hybrid generation scavenging mark and sweep garbage collector supporting bulk-mutation of objects - A virtual machine plugin system with plugins for most parts outside the core like networking, file I/O, sound and graphics - Bit-identical execution including graphics on all major computing platforms including most versions of Windows, MacOS and Unix/Linux, OS/2 Warp and RiscOS. And if your platform wasn't included in that list, Squeak is easy to port.
On top of this there are class libraries and virtual machine plugins for *very advanced multimedia>/Features/ MultiMedia* including anti-aliased 2D and accelerated 3D graphics, real-time sound and music synthesis, MPEG2 video and much more. In addition, Squeak has one of the *most advanced>/Features/Development* fully reflective development environments ever created with over *600 addon packages>http://map.squeak.org* available for single click download and installation.
The entire Squeak system is open source software, distributed freely with a *liberal license>SqueakLicense*.
Hi Brad and all!
Sorry I haven't been able to participate in all this - been ill, and Maya too (light phneumonia) so I have been mostly offline.
Brad Fuller brad@sonaural.com wrote:
<h1>Welcome!</h1>
[SNIP]
I wrote that text and the intent was to make it "packed" with Good Info, still quite short and mainly attract developers, typically from other similar camps like Python etc. At the time there were lots of voices about what to include on the front page (like a reference to Seaside for example) and so on.
If you read it you notice a few things that are not present in the text that is currently under "About" - for example mentioning X3J20, the highly modular VM with its plugin system, the inheritage to Simula, Lisp, Sketchpad etc.
Btw, I noticed (in current About) there is a problem with this line (there should be "with" in there):
"a simple yet efficient incremental garbage collector for 32-bit direct pointers efficient bulk-mutation of objects"
...also the previous line that says:
"it runs bit-identical on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Unix, and others)"
...doesn't play well with the text before it "Other noteworthy aspects of Squeak include". An alternative would be:
"bit-identical execution on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Unix, and others)"
Anyway, I haven't followed the reasoning behind changing the front page, and I don't mind. I just hope that the current "About" picks up the good bits from that text - for example, excluding our inheritage seems like a bad idea.
And oh, while I am nit-picking:
The Features page mentions that *Smalltalk* is: # Interpreted # Cross-platform # Cross-OS # Cross-hardware
I don't agree with that. *Smalltalk* can be compiled and there are for example Smalltalk MT that is both compiled AND non cross-platform (just like Dolphin is non cross-platform).
Mmm, other details on that page:
Squeak can be used for Web Application Development. <- no period "every thing" should be "everything"
Anyway (again), I actually like the current approach and looks of the web page. :)
regards, Göran
goran@krampe.se wrote:
Hi Brad and all!
Sorry I haven't been able to participate in all this - been ill, and Maya too (light phneumonia) so I have been mostly offline.
Brad Fuller brad@sonaural.com wrote:
<h1>Welcome!</h1>
[SNIP]
I wrote that text and the intent was to make it "packed" with Good Info, still quite short and mainly attract developers, typically from other similar camps like Python etc. At the time there were lots of voices about what to include on the front page (like a reference to Seaside for example) and so on.
Yes, I think it is packed with great info and we should use it. Hopefully someone will step up and extend the About page with your text.
Thanks
Btw, I noticed (in current About) there is a problem with this line (there should be "with" in there):
I've fixed the following.
"a simple yet efficient incremental garbage collector for 32-bit direct pointers efficient bulk-mutation of objects"
...also the previous line that says:
"it runs bit-identical on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Unix, and others)"
...doesn't play well with the text before it "Other noteworthy aspects of Squeak include". An alternative would be:
"bit-identical execution on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Unix, and others)"
<snip>
Mmm, other details on that page:
Squeak can be used for Web Application Development. <- no period "every thing" should be "everything"
Hi Brad and all!
Brad Fuller brad@sonaural.com wrote:
goran@krampe.se wrote:
Hi Brad and all!
Sorry I haven't been able to participate in all this - been ill, and Maya too (light phneumonia) so I have been mostly offline.
Brad Fuller brad@sonaural.com wrote:
<h1>Welcome!</h1>
[SNIP]
I wrote that text and the intent was to make it "packed" with Good Info, still quite short and mainly attract developers, typically from other similar camps like Python etc. At the time there were lots of voices about what to include on the front page (like a reference to Seaside for example) and so on.
Yes, I think it is packed with great info and we should use it. Hopefully someone will step up and extend the About page with your text.
Thanks
Btw, I forgot to say so - but that original text was modelled a bit after looking at other popular similar language web sites (Python, Perl, Ruby, Slate and one or two more).
But sure, we will see - no worries.
And oh, thanks for making the adjustments - always a joy to report small things like this to you. I will try to read more of the site and possibly get back with more fixes.
Great work, keep it up!
regards, Göran
webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org