On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:55:11 -0700, newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net wrote:
>
> I've found it confusing in the past that a language translation
> program for the Newt has the same name (almost) as the first
object-oriented
> programming language. This very subject came up this evening at our
latest
> wonderful six-hour Los Angeles Newton Group meeting.
>
> To lay it out for newbies:
>
> Smalltalk (as opposed to Small Talk for the Newt) was invented by
> Alan Kay and others at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center an ungodly number
of
> years ago. It is the first object-oriented programming language (*).
>
> David Unger, of Stanford, developed a new language, Self, which
> is also object-oriented, but introduced the notion of "templates" as a
> replacement for "classes". Last I checked, Self is still available for
> download from Stanford, though it is no longer an active project.
>
> Walter Smith used ideas from Self in developing the NewtonScript
> language. Smith's main contribution was to make inheritance
two-dimensional,
> across both template ancestry and memory type. This single insight,
though
> invisible to the user, is responsible for much of the Newton's power.
>
> (*) Smalltalk is still very active in niche applications, primarily
> in the financial services industry, where turnaround time from concept to
> working implementation is the primary cost driver. The language became
rather
> of a mess when it was first commercialized by ParcPlace Systems, a
spinoff
> from PARC, although virtual machine development was considerable.
>
> Recently, some of the original Smalltalk team, then at Disney,
> reimplemented the original version and architecture of Smalltalk in a
> language called Squeak. Squeak is, largely, the same class structure as
> Xerox PARC Smalltalk, before ParcPlace tried to commercialize it. It is
> open source software, so it runs on everything in sight and is available
> for free. You can check it out at http://www.squeak.org .
>
> Personally, if someone without object-oriented experience (and I
> really can't say I count C++ as object-oriented) is seriously
> interested
Wierd: I used to think of C++ as the type for OOP, having done some course
(the Scheidigger one: just got as far as the use of iostream functions and
the elements of class, inheritance, &c.: having done all the coursework I
ditched the lot because of the way OO was presented in the material as a way
of hiding data away from interfering folk, programmers for example!).
> in learning to program in NewtonScript, I strongly suggest to them that
they
> play with Squeak first, to get OO concepts down, and then undertake
> NewtonScript. The NewtonScript development environment is a dream
compared
> to most others, but having to download stuff into the Newt is really
nowhere
> near as convenient as programming in Squeak. Also, if you blow up the
> Squeak virtual image, you really don't care, but restoring a Newt is a
pain.
>
Actually, since all my downloading is done via the PowerMac, all I have to
worry me is a dead .sit (should have been a stuffit & automatically
decompressed on arrival but was left as a dead file unable to be read by
anything!) file. What seems so nice about the squeak is the handle on
speech functions, midi-files, not to mention its all round flexibility and
its open character.
Funnily enough, NewtScript "looked" more straightforward after my background
in Pascal and a couple of structured BASICs, I managed to get the .pdf NS
manual but the NS package was one of those dead .sit files.... see above!
Can't get it into the newt, just yet: memory already crammed with Eudora and
the newly-installed Newt Internet Enabler 2.0 (so I will be planning to
download directly in the *eventual* future(?) which just leaves me
conducting the initial xperiments on the Mac: sad, isn't it?
John Johnson.
> Mike O'Brien
>
>
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