[Cuis-dev] Emacs & Smalltalk

[ken.dickey at whidbey.com]

On 2022-01-03 07:12, Hernan Wilkinson via Cuis-dev wrote:
..
> I was looking for a "way of thinking" connection between EMacs & 
> Smalltalk ..
> I'm trying to see if there could be (or if it was) a synergy we could 
> have with the Emacs community, it is very similar to the Smalltalk 
> values and objectives... I'm wondering why don't we have more 
> connection/interaction with them? What do you think? (I know that 
> interaction between different language cultures is almost nonexistent 
> and very difficult to achieve, look the many Smalltalks we have :-) )

There are several Emacs .el files which allow for parsing Smalltalk 
code, particularly matched to GNU Smalltalk.

https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/GNU_Smalltalk_EMACS_mode

e.g.
https://github.com/GwenaelCasaccio/smalltalk/blob/main/smalltalk-mode.el

There was the start of a ST-80-alike as EOOPS:

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsObjectOrientedProgrammingSystem

The main problem I see is that the runtime models are quite different.

It has been quite some time, but when last I looked, Emacs Lisp still 
used dynamic binding.  There have been one or two attempts to (re)write 
Emacs with Scheme in place of Emacs Lisp, but these have not caught on.  
[Scheme uses mostly static binding].

After these efforts, I don't see much chance of switching the "center of 
gravity" for Emacs users toward Smalltalk.

Having "emacs fingers" after years of use, I personally would enjoy and 
Emacs-like editor in Cuis. [I use 'mg' for much editing].  But I don't 
think the Emacs community would be attracted to this.

With respect to language unity, Smalltalk is in many ways closer to 
Scheme than Emacs Lisp.

If you are odd enough to be interested in such things, I did a 
Scheme->Squeak translator which passed the R5RS Scheme test suite.

   https://github.com/KenDickey/Scheme2Smalltalk-Translator

As well as a _toy_ Smalltalk-In-Scheme minimal runtime:

   https://github.com/KenDickey/Crosstalk

Fun to think about, but too much work for my short lifetime.

;^)
-KenD