Post #1388231

2026-04-19 10:03 UTC

What I find interesting about this article by Adele Goldberg on why use Smalltalk, published in 1995, is the mention of the language being fun. Smalltalk denotes fun and success. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/226239.226260 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/226239.226260 #smalltalk #retrocomputing

Replies (4)

@rasur@mastodon.social 2026-04-19 10:08

Recently started fooling around with squeak & cuis after a ~18 year gap (ruby instead) and was immediately reminded that the immediacy and interactivity (and the ease of exploration of the system) made it _so much more_ fun than literally everything else i’ve been fooling with in the intervening time (even Lisp!). This is the computer I wish I had as a teen 40+ years ago (and given the development in the meantime, it’s much more doable now)

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@amoroso@oldbytes.space 2026-04-19 10:45

@mdhughes Shipping Lisp applications as Lisp Machines with preinstalled software was common back in the day.

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@lain_7@tldr.nettime.org 2026-04-19 14:44

@mdhughes @amoroso reinvented as “containers” today.

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@DLC@mstdn.social 2026-04-19 10:59

@amoroso Forth, Lisp, Smalltalk, Self and similar allow you to grow your own computing enviorment as you need it, adapting it as your needs change. It's software development as gardening not as engineering.

Open ##1744301