Embedding Objective-Smalltalk

blog.metaobject.com

78 points·mpweiher··7 comments

This brings to mind an expression I wanted to have put on a T-shirt around 1997:

On the front: The more I use Java On the back: The more I love Smalltalk

This was while I was in the middle of writing a compiler front-end and a code generator for a JVM. I decided to write the compiler in Java (eat your own dog food), and the exact kind of do. every. step. at. a. time. in the example here made me long for select: []

It looks a lot like functional code actually. I used to do this stuff with F# and Elixir. Arrows are quite effective to point out where the data is going.

Yeah, this is mostly OO code, and good OO code tends to be not all that dissimilar to good FP code.

You might find Gilad Bracha's talk interesting:

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/functional-pros-cons/

"both without a hitch and the latter shrugging of a Hacker News "Hug of Death" without even the hint of glitch."

Not an easy feat, indeed. Respect !

Got a bit feel of Objective C. Related?

Did the name give it away? :-)

Yes, as the peer comment noted, the "Objective" part of the Objective-C hybrid language was modelled after Smalltalk.

If you need more information about how it all connects, you can check out

https://blog.metaobject.com/2019/12/the-4-stages-of-objectiv...

and

http://objective.st/

Objective-C was explicitly modelled after Smalltalk.

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