Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

> Hi again -
>
> I will stop polluting this otherwise sane list, but I can't resist one more thought...
>
> You know I never left Smalltalk;  I'm just using another language right now ;-).  One of the early thoughts I had when working on the Lively Kernel was to put a Smalltalk "skin" on top of it, and I'd have a Lively Smalltalk.  I was going to release it to SqueakLand as an April Fool's prank, but the day came and went;  then a year came and went, and so it goes...
>
> Meanwhile, Alex Warth sketched a Smalltalk evaluator in OMeta and put it up on his Tin Lizzie site.  Anticipating various fun language experiments, we then integrated OMeta (as JavaScript) with the Lively Kernel, and Robert Krahn put together a Lively version of Alex's experiment.  You might find it intriguing...
>
> http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/Dan/OMeta-Smalltalk-Demo.xhtml
>
> This should work on Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera, with iPad and IE9 working RSN.   You should be able to select expressions and evaluate them with cmd-p or something similar (different in different browsers and platforms).  If all else fails, you should be able to bring up a menu with cmd-click, and select Text-functions/print-it. Don't forget to scroll the Smalltalk workspace up -- the best examples are out of view.
>
> So, is this a joke?
>
> Modern JavaScripts runs at a speed comparable to Squeak
> The graphics are resolution-independent and anti-aliased
> It runs in almost every browser
> You don't need to install it to run
> You can save your work on a web page and share it that way too
>
> Of course it's only a two-day hack, but what if someone actually got serious about it?  And what about the synergy with Gilad's interest in compiling Newspeak to JS?   For me, I think we could have a lot of fun in the next year.  If this tickles your fancy, hop on the Lively Kernel mail list and we'll try to give you some support.  The documentation is sparse but the people are friendly.
>
> All the best
>
> - Dan
>
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>

> Its not a joke.
> I would really like to have a full smalltalk support in browser, up to
> placing smalltalk in
> <script language="smalltalk"> ....
>
> It is great that JavaScript is prototype-based. And it is shame that
> its having such poor C-like syntax.
> What is interesting, that people exploiting a message passing with
> continuation and blocks-like programming style in javascript, which
> closely mimics smalltalk semantics.
>
> For instance, this is an example from JQuery library:
>
> $("div.title", wizard).each(function(index) {
>    $(this)
>    .next()
>    .children(":button")
>    .filter(".next, .previous")
>    .click(function() {
>        wizard.changeAccordion("activate", index +
> ($(this).is(".next") ? 1 : -1))
>    });
> });
>
> Looks familiar to us, isnt? And totally alien for C world :)
>
> This could be easily translated to smalltalk, to something like:
>
> (JQuery select: 'div.title') do: [:each :index |
>   ((each next children: ':button') filter: '.next, .previous') click:
> [ wizard changeAccordion: ... ]
>
>
> yeah.. keyword selectors require wrapping with (), to do continuation,
> but still, its much more clean than js code.
> I remember discusison about introducing a special syntax which would
> allow to use continuations for keyword selectors,
> without need of wrapping then into parethesis. So, code like:
>
> ((self foo: bar) baz: 1) jump
>
> could be written as:
>
> self foo: bar | baz: 1 | jump
>
> which makes it even more clean and convenient to type, since you don't
> have to get back into beginning of message to put
> opening paren.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
>
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