Squeak, Ruby, OO languages...

[ameoba]

I'm taking this software design class and the prof is a big Smalltalk guy (also very big on XP-style 'agile' development methods). I was thinking that picking up a smalltalk-esque language would help understand where he's coming from.

Currently, it looks like the 2 most popular systems in this vein seem to be Squeak and Ruby. Any comments on the two? Suggestions of other alternatives?

 

[slimharpo]

I'd try Squeak first as far as Smalltalk goes. It's nice and small, and pretty faithful to (what seems to me to be) the original spirit of Smalltalk. If you can't get over Squeak's UI and occasional instability, then you can get free for personal use versions of VisualWorks and IBM's VisualAge. They are more conventional-looking, and probably more stable.

Ruby's a lot of fun, and there's a good book about it available for free on the web, though it is the now somewhat-dated first edition. Ruby is very OO in the common "everything's an object" sense of the term, and fairly OO in the original sense[1]. There's still quite a gulf between Ruby, or any file-based language, and the image-based Smalltalk "environments". The next closest thing to Squeak would probably be one of those now-extinct Lisp machines.

As far as other OO languages to check out, I guess you could look at Javascript as the only really popular representative of "paradigm-based" OO, or check out IO if you are not concerned about popularity.

[1] "messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things".

 

[ameoba]

The next closest thing to Squeak would probably be one of those now-extinct Lisp machines.

They're not completely extinct, I've got a pair of TI Explorers laying dormant in the basement. +)


Thanks for the info...