Monthly Archives: November 2010

“Visual Studio, Ruby on Rails, and Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk” at 40withegg: a tasty, filling meal for your mind

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I love this article. I’ve been playing/working with Ruby for a while but man I just can’t get past the stone age tools that they have. The other real hard thing about is that when I compare something like Seaside/Gemstone to Ruby on Rails , its hands down not Ruby on Rails. The only thing that makes me pause is of course that Ruby is hot and well Smalltalk is just there. Then again its been “there” for a while. It doesn’t seem to quite go away. It survives , and I still survive making a living with it. But learning is good, and having more tools on your resume can’t hurt. If I have to go anywhere else than Smalltalk I guess that Ruby might be ok, notwithstanding the better tool support in Java. I’m a dynamic languages type of guy.

Anyhow, this guy wrote a  real cool and to the point article on Ruby and why people should listen to “old dudes that know Smalltalk” , I of course agree.

“Visual Studio, Ruby on Rails, and Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk” at 40withegg: a tasty, filling meal for your mind.

LargeViewer 1.0 for iOS Displays Documents Up to 10,000 x 8,000 Pixels

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Our friend John McIntosh and long time Smalltalker has been venturing in the field of iOS apps. Can’t say that I blame them , it seems like a great market for consumer apps and Objective- C shares enough similarities with Smalltalk to make it feel almost homey.

[prMac.com] Sidney, BC, Canada – Corporate Smalltalk Consulting, Ltd. today is pleased to introduce LargeViewer 1.0 for iOS, their innovative document viewer that accommodates very wide documents, up to 10,000 x 8,000 pixels, or larger. Ideal for examining 48-inch wide blueprints, detailed site layouts, or CAD drawings using an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, the app’s Hippo View provides fast scrolling vertically and horizontally. LargeViewer reads over 50 different file formats, includes zoom in/out functionality, features Dropbox file download connectivity and management, saves files as thumbnails for quick view, supports multi-tasking,and opens documents from other apps.

Read more about it here:

LargeViewer 1.0 for iOS Displays Documents Up to 10,000 x 8,000 Pixels.

Smalltalk Labs Browser for blogs released!

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Smalltalk Labs Browser for blogs is available…. NOW!

http://slbrowserfb.appspot.com interactive installation instructions are at the very bottom (click on “configuration”).

It’s free and open source, licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0 (both the client and the server). I had originally planned to release this under the MIT license but the Apache License was a better fit for reasons too numerous to name here.

More here: Smalltalk Labs – Smalltalk Labs Browser for blogs released!.

The Zen of Smalltalk Algorithm Coding

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Postponed due to the weather until next wednesday.

Bio:

Florin Mateoc is a professional programmer for more than 20 years. He has programmed in Fortran, assembly, Basic, C, C++, Smalltalk, Java and C#. He is not a Smalltalk bigot,he does not think that Smalltalk is either perfect or the end of the evolutionary line of programming languages. He just thinks that nothing better has come along yet. Since discovering Smalltalk in 1995, he has worked with Enfin/ObjectStudio, VisualWorks and VisualAge and he has played with Squeak. He has especiallyenjoyed developing tools: he has contributed improvements to the profilers in VisualWorks, he has developed collaboration (patch and release management) and comparison tools on top of Envy, he has worked on type inferencing for Smalltalk and on automatic translation from Smalltalk to Java.

Abstract:

Taking to heart some advice from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Florin has taken a truly circuitous route to what started as an intention to develop some better comparison tools. This took him to investigate longest common subsequence algorithms, then to a naive implemention in Smalltalk of a classic algorithm (Hirschberg), then playing with more and more optimized versions, through the discovery of an algorithmic improvement, and finally fighting the inadequacies of simple time recording and profiling tools for fine-grained performance measurements.

Please stop by and visit with us on Dec 1st , 2010 where our long time friend Florin will be discussing how his Smalltalk implementation of a classic algorithm and how the Zen of Smalltalk made it possible.

As always our meetings are open to the general public, so bring a friend.

6:30 – 7pm and the presentation starts 7pm.

Please make note of our new directions:


60 East 42nd Street, Suite 914