Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Squeak Smalltalk 4.1


Could this be a Squeak right out of the box?

That is a menu bar with Projects, Tools, Extras, Windows, Help and a Search entry field. And where are the Fi$her-Price colours? (They are an option now.)

This is the influence of Gilad Bracha's Newspeak.  The release comes not long after Pharo Smalltalk went 1.0 (although I don't know the politics.)

The good news for Squeak and Smalltalk is that 4.1 has so many important changes which are not cosmetic. These include updated closures, even greater modularity (unload, reload), a new implementation of Traits from the folks who gave us traits. And a great many changes in the class hierarchy.  All of these listed when you click the green or the orange buttons on that "Welcome to Squeak 4.1" pane.

If you have wanted to learn Smalltalk, there are even more resources online now, including Pharo By Example. The first thing to know in Squeak or Pharo is to left or right click in that workarea background (the brushed aluminum-looking main window area.)

There will be other Smalltalk news coming when Vision Smalltalk appears (also known as DNG or Dolphin Next-Generation Smalltalk.)

It remains an oddity to me that Smalltalkers are still using Adobe PDF for their e-books .... see FotB.

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