Squeak forth and Logo

SmallSqueak smallsqueak at rogers.com
Sat Apr 15 05:24:30 UTC 2006


Dear Squeakers,

    Alan wrote:

> Check out the original Smalltalk-72. It was a very extensible language at
> all levels and nothing special had to be done if you wanted to use a
> number as a selector.
>

    It is interesting to note Guy Steele "stealing" the biological metaphor
    when referring to Fortress:

        http://research.sun.com/projects/plrg/fortress0618.pdf

    as a "growable language" !

    Actually he gave an interesting talk, "Growing a Language" (OOPSLA98?)
    starting with words of just one syllable then he had to define bigger
    words before he could use them in the talk (is that a "small" talk ? ;-)

    That "small" talk was printed in "Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation"
    (12/1999, pp 221-236):

        http://www.brics.dk/~hosc/local/HOSC-12-3-pp221-236.pdf

    So much for Guy's "small" talk and his "growable language".

    Now back to the real Smalltalk's, perhaps Smalltalk 72 is the most
    growable of them all ?

    Dan had an image of Smalltalk 72 running inside Squeak.

    Is there a real VM for Smalltalk 72 with source available some where?

    Any pointer is very much appreciated. It would be interesting to see
    the trio plugins for Smalltalk 72 VM running atop a couple of other VM
    (Forth is one of them ;-)

    Cheers,

    SmallSqueak

    P.S: If Smalltalk 72 was the most growable then perhaps Squeak is
           the most shrinkable ? ;-)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Kay" <alan.kay at squeakland.org>
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak.general
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 11:13 AM
Subject: Re: Squeak forth and Logo


> Check out the original Smalltalk-72. It was a very extensible language at 
> all levels and nothing special had to be done if you wanted to use a 
> number as a selector.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> -----------
>
> At 03:49 AM 4/8/2006, Francisco Garau wrote:
>>I am having fun with dates, and I can build them with the following 
>>expression:
>>
>>    2006 year april dayNumber: 30
>>
>>I don't like the keyword selector there, because it breaks the beauty of 
>>the expression and forces parenthesis afterwards. It would be nicer if I 
>>could write:
>>
>>    2006 year april 30
>>
>>It would never had occurred to me that numbers *could* be selectors if I 
>>hadn't taken a look at Forth. In that amazing little language *anything* 
>>can be a selector (eg. #?! or ^%* are valid selectors or word names, as 
>>they call them).
>>
>>As a comprise, I decided to use the following expression:
>>
>>    2006 year april day30
>>
>>But that leaves me with another problem. Basically defining 31 methods 
>>like this:
>>
>>    TmActualMonth>>day30
>>        ^ self dayNumber: 30
>>
>>Very boring. In the very Logo way, I created a method that creates those 
>>boring methods:
>>
>>    TmActualMonth class>>installBoringMethods
>>        (1 to: 31) collect: [:number |
>>            self fakeCompile:
>>                (String streamContents:
>>                    [:stream |
>>                    stream
>>                        nextPutAll: 'day';
>>                        print: number; cr; tab;
>>                        nextPutAll: '^ self dayNumber: ';
>>                        print: number ] ) ]
>>
>>Now I have to rush to our first UK Smalltalk meeting. Stephen Taylor from 
>>APL fame will be giving a presentation. It seems that there are lots of 
>>similarities between the APL and the Smalltalk community. But we are 
>>bigger!!
>>
>>-Francisco
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> 




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