a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

        http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk

Howdy!

(cc to squeak-dev because I think lots want to read this)

If you want to know some cool history of Smalltalk, and perhaps this is a strong argument in actually *being* a Smalltalk and not trying to distance yourself from that rich and lovely heritage.... anyway, here goes:

On 04/28/2014 08:14 PM, Alain Busser wrote:

Also, Ruby is famous for these methods:

*select
*reject
*collect

do these names not remind you something ;-) ?

There is a funny story about these verbs. Martin McClure told me at ESUG in Brest to ask Dan Ingalls about it, hinting that they are "inspired" by a famous song.

And thus I did ask Dan in my interview with him I did a few years back over Skype (it is an interesting interview, for example - was there an inspiration from biology when Smalltalk was created?):

http://files.krampe.se/interview.mp3

...the song in question is by Arlo Guthrie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Restaurant_Massacree

...and here is a URL to the lyrics of it:

http://www.lyricsty.com/arlo-guthrie-alices-restaurant-lyrics.html

(search down to "injected"!) ...or just let me quote:

"They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street,
Where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
Neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one
Day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning."


...now... where do we stuff in #neglect:? :)

regards, Göran