[Cuis-dev] new YouTube video on Cuis Smalltalk

[Juan Vuletich]

On 6/23/2024 5:19 AM, Jaromir Matas via Cuis-dev wrote:
> I'm not sure I understand the part about "knowledge" though: "Write, 
> describe, communicate knowledge" - what does it mean exactly? Is it 
> about Smalltalk as a language? The language itself is not that 
> different from other (high-level) languages. A good language certainly 
> is a great help to formulate things but it's still a "programming 
> language". I guess there more to it I didn't get :)
>
> Or is it about the whole concept including the live "OS-like" 
> environment? But where the "writing knowledge" fits in?
>

There are only some many things that can be said in an hour.

There are several links at 
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/blob/master/Documentation/AboutCuis.md#the-philosophy-behind-cuis 
. Have you read them? Please do.

And, as I said at the start of the podcast, Smalltalk is an attitude. If 
you are a programmer, wanting to solve some problem with code, then 
Smalltalk is a good programming language. But if you want to explore a 
field, understand, and document your journey of discovery and invention, 
you could use pencil and paper. Or perhaps Jupyter Notebooks. Or 
Smalltalk. If you use Smalltalk this way, it is way more than a 
programming system.

> Other question - Smalltalk was originally supposed to be the universal 
> environment above the hardware level. Everything below the VM is the 
> hardware (a machine language), everything above the VM is Smalltalk 
> (the UI, apps...). Even the VM is written in a simplified Smalltalk 
> (Slang); what was supposed to be the role of C - to stay as an 
> intermediary between the Smalltalk level and the hardware or was (is?) 
> it supposed to be eliminated somehow eventually?

In my opinion, "Design Principles Behind Smalltalk" is the canon here. C 
had no role originally, only much later. And its only role is to be a 
useful implementation language for VMs. Nothing special.

>
> And one more note about "easy to use, intuitive, for children" - this 
> refers to the DynaBook concept, right? Smalltalk as a language is a 
> lot of things but certainly not those things :) Simple syntax doesn't 
> mean simplicity but it thank god it saves me from remembering tons of 
> syntactic rules :) Anyway, many thanks for explaining the DynaBook 
> concept!
>
> Thanks again for the great talk!
> best,
> Jaromir

Yes. Smalltalk was started as the "software half" of a Dynabook. You'd 
read about the history, starting from Smalltalk-72, its objectives and 
the experiences done by the Parc Learning Research Group. And what 
happened after that, how they did Smalltalk-80, and to what extent focus 
was changed. Same with the developments described in the Green Book, and 
later commercial Smalltalks. How / why focus changed? What happened with 
"for children"? Out of where did Etoys, Scratch, and the whole world of 
tile programming came to be?

I think it is best to read what the people who did all this wrote. For 
instance, start with 
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/blob/master/Documentation/Philosophical/OnMakingDynabooksReal.md 
. Yes, the stuff in the Cuis repo is there for a reason.

Cheers,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
cuis.st
github.com/jvuletich
researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich
independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich
patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich
linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
twitter.com/JuanVuletich

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