Blaine Buxton: Positronic Vibrations From Alto Dorado

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• This saddens me, no end. I used to be pen pals with Denis when I joined their fan club, Iron Gang, around 1983. He was always the one to write back. I finally got to meet him in the 90's and partied with him, Snake, and Away on The Outer Limits tour. Denis was EXTREMELY underated. I can honestly say NO ONE sounded like him! Or Voivod, for that matter!
  RIP, Denis.
  
  Tim Shockley
  Chicago

  By Anonymous, at 1:01 AM   

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• Hi Blaine,
  
  Rumor has it that Ruby will be sporting something like an 'image'... Of course I can't validate the rumor; I received this second-hand information second-handedly ;)
  
  It really is good to see languages advancing towards Smalltalk. Gives me hope. :)

  By Mel, at 9:23 AM   

• Moving to an image approach and then improving on that would be goodness.
  
  Then where do languages go?
  
  Sooner rather than later they need to embrace concurrency and distribution. Languages need to bust out of the image, even though it makes sense in the small.

  By Patrick Logan, at 11:57 AM   

• "It's well known that I tried to kill Smalltalk in the later '70s. There were a few years when it was the most wonderful thing in the world. It answered needs in a more compact and beautiful way than anything that had been done before. But time moves on. As we learned more and got more ambitious about what we wanted to do, we realized that there are all kinds of things in Smalltalk that don't scale the way they should - for instance, the reflection stuff that we had in there. It was one of the first languages to really be able to see itself, but now it is known how to do all levels of reflection much better - so we should implement that."
  A Conversation with Alan Kay, Dec/Jan 2004-2005

  By Isaac Gouy, at 1:26 PM   

• Some celebrate each advance towards a better engine, however, people buy cars.
  
  Eventually it will be the tools that will sell the language, not the language itself.
  
  Lots of effort is being poured into tools. If tools and the speed of the hardware can simulate all the goodness of Smalltalk and hide the ugliness for whatever language is under the hood, alas, Smalltalk won't get much traction.
  
  Intentional Programming and Software Factories just might leapfrog over any "better languages". Most folk like tools, not ever changing, ever improving language syntax... else eMacs would have overcome Windows in the marketplace.

  By Socinian, at 5:34 PM   

• IBM makes a ton of money on the tools, like WebSphere, not the languages that run on it like HTML or Java, while Sun loses money on the language. Macromedia and Adobe make money on the tools, not the language. Windows & Office are the tools that make money. The API is the language that locks it in, not the programming language.
  
  Tools are more hardware, network, distribution, concurrency end-user-skill aware than the language.
  
  At best, Smalltalk should leverage its language advantage to make better app dev tools. Croquet's "shared image" and "massive collaboration" might be the only killer app tools out there.
  
  The image alone won't do it. Any tool that allows anyone to make true := false and thereby corrupt all data and all code and relies on a questionably timed backup of the entire environment for restore, is suspect.

  By Socinian, at 5:54 PM   

• 10 or 20 years if you are lucky. We only took 100 years to use the printing press for something other than bibles...

  By Andres, at 11:15 PM   

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• Check out the following:
  
  http://www.ironmaiden.com/index.php?section=1&subsection=1
  
  What a contrast!

  By Andres, at 10:21 PM   

• We know that it was a sharon osbourne idea...So she has to leave music business. She destroyed ozzy and sabbath but she cannot do the same thing to iron maiden.
  UP THE IRONS!!!!!!!

  By Anonymous, at 7:33 AM   

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• Why go down the whole COM route, instead of the in-browser javascript model that selenium uses? We're doing a COM approach in work, and it's nasty. We're looking at selenium with envy.

  By Anonymous, at 10:42 AM   

• Really COM is a small piece. In fact, it's just the driver to get an instance of IE. I don't plan to use COM for Firefox. It's just for the reference implementation. The interesting bits will be in walking your DOM model and more intention revealing tests. Also, the more fun bit will be generating tests. I want to stick to standard Javascript as much as possible. In fact, I'm hiding all of the COM stuff behind an object and so far, it's very little of the code. I will be using more Javascript in the browser, but it will not be in the page.

  By Blaine, at 6:45 PM   

• Blaine, you should talk to your friend Mark P. He implemented a COM based HTTP testing framework in VAST. Like you, he simply used the COM interface as a browser driver. It's hidden inside an object and he's talked about plugging it into Firefox.

  By Doug S., at 8:52 AM   

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• That's a great quote. Ruby could improve a lot though. The first thing I would love to see is Ruby being self-hosted, that way we could have access to the parser and to the compiler directly from withing Ruby. I think that Factor can do it.

  By Vincent Foley, at 10:09 PM   

• Hehe, like I said -- there couldn't possibly have been a better opportunity to post that with SELF being a prototype based language and all that. :)

  By Florian Groß, at 5:15 PM   

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• Blaine, what happened?
  
  I'm not used to this kind of comments coming from you. I call myself a hacker and I didn't see anything offensive.
  
  
  Am I the only programmer offended by crap like this? I hate the words "geek" and "nerd". And "hacker" to me means someone who programs Big Balls Of Mud and doesn't care.
  
  I guess that sums it up, you seem prejudiced by some words so you refused to read the actual information. If you read a bit larger part of the doc you'll see that it doesn't line up with 'not caring' about big balls of mud hackers create.
  
  
  Wish you a better mood ;-)

  By Reinout Heeck, at 4:10 AM   

• Dude, calm down. Have some dip.
  
  I used to be offended by "geek" and "nerd" but in the last 10 years there has been an effort to reclaim the words as our own. It's something like whats happening to the words "gay", "queer", "fag", etc. in the gay community. You take the word and use it in a positive manner to change it's meaning and wrest control of it from thoses who would use it in a derogatory manner.
  
  Some pretty good definitions of the term "Hacker" are below...The standard community usage is much more positive than you make it out to be.
  http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker

  By John Dougan, at 4:35 AM   

• First off, I know my comments were harsh, probably too harsh. It's what I was feeling at the moment. I just needed to vent. I know the historical usage of "hacker" is very positive. But, after hearing so many people use it to mean "bad programmer" it got programmed into me wrong. I'm still working through that because a lot of my heros use it to describe themselves. Maybe one day, I'll come out and proclaim myself a "hacker". One never knows.
  
  I was mainly offended on a big "how to become a programmer" type of document. To me, all you need is a "how to program" and a thirst for how to make computers do your bidding. The rest will come naturally. Describing how to be become accepted in the community by reading science fiction (one example from the "Points For Style") was just silly. I did like the section: "The Hacker Attitude". I guess the document came off to me like a "dummies" book. Hence, my "rant".
  
  Now, on to "nerd" and "geek", the way I feel about them is that they are mean words. Something I would never call a friend. I just don't like mean words.
  
  I'm in a better mood now. But, I've seen stuff lately on "how to date geeks", "how to talk to a nerd", and etc. And I guess the last straw was the "how to become a geek".
  
  I really do need to get over my definition of "hacker" though. I'll work on that one...=)

  By Blaine, at 7:33 AM   

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• I was going to send out more announcements once I put up some more things that are in the pipeline, but kudos to anyone who already found it :)
  
  I will be publishing a few more products within a "Quotes" line, look for pro-Smalltalk quotes from Alan Kay starting Monday.

  By Boris Popov, at 12:24 PM   

• COOL! I made my order today. I'll be buying more....=) Smalltalk on!

  By Blaine, at 9:31 PM   

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• "Shouldn't we be making the code more readable?"
  I'd be interested in seeing your idea of a more readable alternative for those interface definitions - particularly a more readable alternative for 'E'

  By Isaac Gouy, at 2:08 PM   

• This is why I don't particularly care for generics/templates. It's a tradeoff in readability for something that dyamic languages get for free.
  
  As far as a better name for 'E', Mr. Gouy, we've been doing this for a long time in dynamic languages (reflecting and passing class references around). I'd be inclined to call it 'ElementClass' or 'ElementType' if you want to convey that you can use it with primitives. The whole idea is that you'll type it once but read it a thousand times, so make it express something.

  By Samuel Tesla, at 4:17 PM   

• Samuel, I feel it would be unfair to respond to your comments, as Blaine has failed to reproduce the example correctly.
  
  (Here's the example using square-brackets instead of angle-brackets)
  
  public interface List[E] {
  void add(E x);
  Iterator[E] iterator();
  }
  
  public interface Iterator[E] {
  E next();
  boolean hasNext();
  }

  By Isaac Gouy, at 4:57 PM   

• The point of Blaine's post was that it was unusual, and contrary to accepted naming practices, to name a variable with a single letter.
  
  The fact that Sun recommends it is astonishing.
  
  The fact that Blaine omitted some syntax elements is completely irrelevant to his argument.
  
  Ravi

  By Ravi Venkataraman, at 8:17 PM   

• Ravi, the quotation specifically states formal type parameters it doesn't say "name a variable with a single letter".

  By Isaac Gouy, at 9:24 PM   

• we've been doing this for a long time in dynamic languages
  We might have been "reflecting and passing class references around" but we sure haven't been naming formal type parameters.

  By Isaac Gouy, at 11:31 AM   

• Huh? I couldn't believe my eyes and what I was reading
  I have much the same reaction when I find that the sentence following the one Blaine quotes gives the rationale for the naming convention.
  
  "making it easy to distinguish formal type parameters from ordinary classes and interfaces"
  
  iow everyone knows better than to use single letter names for classes and interfaces - so when we see a single letter name, we can be confident the parameter is not a class or an interface but is a formal type parameter.

  By Isaac Gouy, at 11:44 AM   

• I started to write a response here, and realized that it was big enough to be a post of its own. It's over here on my blog.
  
  As far as reflection and class references. Yes, exactly. That's my point. We Don't Have To Do This Crap. In dynamic languages we can get all of the benefits that generics bring to statically typed languages without all of the nasty readability problems. Not to mention the complexity bloat.
  
  Static typing is a language designer's way of saying he thinks programmers are too stupid to write software and that he must make the computer catch their mistakes. Generics are static typing's way of approximating the things that dynamic languages can do because dynamic languages trust the programmer to be smart.

  By Samuel Tesla, at 11:25 PM   

• Samuel: no secret that the next version of Java will have generics
  Ummm hasn't Java had generics for almost a year?
  
  Matrix[E, F]
  Of course sometimes we deal with hypercubes made up of strings and doubles and dates and... If we're just doing matrix math, wouldn't all the elements be the same type, irrespective of the number of dimensions? Matrix[T]
  
  It's funny how often we complain about the rhetoric thrown against Smalltalk by people who've never used the language, but then we don't seem at all inhibited in lambasting something we haven't used ;-)

  By Isaac Gouy, at 2:35 AM   

• sexual

  By Anonymous, at 2:07 AM   

• sexual

  By Anonymous, at 2:07 AM   

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• Hi Blaine,
  
  first, I agree with you that Seaside is simpler to use than Rails, it works just like a normal application. I do think however that an ActiveRecord-like package to make database-backed website easier would boost Seaside's popularity tremendously.
  
  And I agree with you, the Smalltalk (and also the Ruby) community should be open, friendly, non-snob. People should see more than the language, they should see that it's a great place to get help, meet new people, etc. I do think that the image-source file has tremendous advantages over plain text files, however we need to be able to effectivly, but calmly, demonstrate those advantages; nobody likes someone soving concept down his throat, once you discover something for yourself, you're much more likely to enjoy it than if someone called you a fool on the net for having a different opinion.

  By Vincent Foley, at 4:38 PM   

• I think Squeak in general would benefit with better persistence options for legacy systems. I think this in turn would help Seaside. I like the fact that Seaside is a web framework and nothing more. It allows me to pick the persistence mechanism that works for me.
  
  As for the communities, I agree 100%. I think people need to remember that. Snobbery hurt the Lisp community for years. Hell, I didn't mess with PLT Scheme for a long time because of their poor behavior at the Lightweight Languages Conference 2.
  
  Just because someone doesn't your light instantly doesn't make them an idiot. They might have good reasons, listen to them and grow.
  
  Let's all embrace solving complex problems through simplicity.
  
  And let's remember the java community is not evil. Hell, I'm apart of that community too. Lots of old Smalltalkers and aspiring full-time Rubyists are there as well. We just all can't wait to do our jobs better.

  By Blaine, at 5:04 PM   

• Hear here!
  
  I couldn't agree with this sentiment more. There are so many things that we can learn from the plethora of languages out there. It is part of why I try to learn at least one new language every year.
  
  Ruby and Smalltalk both have their appeals, and so do Lisp, Objective C, Java, C#, and Delphi (the languages I typically work in). The trick is just to figure out which tasks each language will make easiest and fun.

  By Samuel Tesla, at 9:17 PM   

• sensual

  By Anonymous, at 4:19 AM   

• sensual

  By Anonymous, at 4:19 AM   

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• If you like Ruby, you might want to check out . It's both simpler and more dynamic.

  By Anonymous, at 5:20 AM   

• I have checked out Io and I am in love with it too. I can't wait to spend a lot of time with it. It seems to be the closest thing to Self. I also need to play with Slate as well. Thanks for the link! Prototype languages rule!

  By Blaine, at 11:26 AM   

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• Ruby! Ruby! Ruby!

  By Vincent Foley, at 9:15 PM   

• This post has been removed by the author.

  By Isaac Gouy, at 2:45 AM   

• Preceding those comments, in the same section, Stroustrup writes:
  
  The programming world is far more complex today than it was 30 years ago, and modern programming languages reflect that.
  
  The Dan Ingalls quote is 25 years old.

  By Isaac Gouy, at 6:54 PM   

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