What killed Smalltalk could kill Python

[Albert van der Horst]

In article <mailman.17920.1421864740.18130.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Chase  <python.list at tim.thechases.com> wrote:
>On 2015-01-22 03:34, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
>> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".
>
>Holy pacing, Batman.  Watching it at 2x leaves me wondering how much
>of the stage was worn off during the presentation.
>
>> And now it's all but dead. Why did it die, and how can Python (or
>> Ruby for that matter) avoid the same fate?
>
>In my experience, most Python has a particularly low WTF-per-minute
>score.
>
>But mostly Michael's reply addresses my biggest pain points the last
>couple times I tried Smalltalk: The whole "images" thing impeded me
>from easily using my development preferred environment.
>
>With Python, I can just install it and then either fire up the
>REPL, or type some code into a file and run it (same I suppose would
>go for Ruby).
>
>I fought for over an hour trying to figure out how to just get
>ANYTHING to run in Smalltalk.  I installed Squeak on Debian and yet I
>couldn't get any code examples to run.  I had to go find some
>environments on the web, download them, modify them, and eventually
>something ran.  Eventually I just gave up and returned to a world
>where everything made sense.

This is the introductory chapter of my Forth:

"
4 Manual
********

4.1 Getting started
===================

4.1.1 Hello world!
------------------

Type `lina64' to get into your interactive Forth system.  You will see
a signon message.  While sitting in your interactive Forth doing a
"hello world" is easy:
     "Hello world!" TYPE
     Hello world! OK
   Note that the computer ends its output with `OK' to indicate that it
has completed the command.
Making it into an interactively usable program is also easy:
     : HELLO "Hello world!" TYPE CR ;
     OK
     HELLO
     Hello world!
     OK
   This means you type the command `HELLO' while you are in lina64.  As
soon as you leave lina64, the new command is gone.

If you want to use the program a second time, you can put it in a file
`hello.frt'.  It just contains the definition we typed earlier:
      : HELLO "Hello world!" TYPE CR ;
   This file can be `INCLUDED'  inorder to add the command `HELLO' to
your Forth environment, like so:
     "hello.frt" INCLUDED
     OK
     HELLO
     Hello world!
     OK
   During development you probably have started with `lina64 -e', so
you need just type
     INCLUDE hello.frt

   In order to make a stand alone program to say hello you can use that
same source file, again `hello.frt'.  Now build the program by
lina64 -c hello.frt
(That is `c' for compile.)  The result is a file `hello' .  This file
can be run from your command interpreter, or shell.  It is a single
file that you can pass to some one else to run on their computer,
without the need for them to install Forth.  For the compiler to run
you must have the library correctly installed.
"

Seems like I did it slightly better.
(Mind you, this is chapter 4, for beginners there is chapter 2,
e.g. if the `` : '' word puzzles you.)

Groetjes Albert



>
>-tkc
>
>
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert at spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst