Smalltalk is a language that is extremely difficult to use for any practical applications, and there is relatively little to no corporate support for it (meaning nobody is pushing it into their IDE for use in mainstream application development.) So, it's basically on the Forth/Pascal dead language track.
However, it was a heavy influence on Objective-C, which can be used for all kinds of practical applications (hundreds of thousands of iPhone apps for example). There is a obj-c compiler in gcc, so you can compile Objective-C apps for Linux and Windows through cygwin. Having written some code in Objective-C, I think it is useful, it offers the advantages of having strong object orientation, but without the object-orientation handcuffs you get in pure OO languages like Smalltalk. You can build a really good Object model in Objective-C, but inside each function or method, you are free to write anything from Objective-C to C++ to pure C code, so you can go nuts declaring variables to allocating and freeing memory all willy-nilly if you want. I guess that's what makes languages that stick closer to C more useful, more powerful, more flexible in my book. So, (just my opinion all over the place here) if you are interested in Smalltalk, you should learn Objective-C first. On 5/13/2010, "Trevor Benedict" <mre...@gmail.com> wrote: >Whats smalltalk? >-- MrEcho >;) > > >On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 7:10 PM, <do...@hawcenter.org> wrote: > >> Please post to anyone who might be interested -- >> >> >> Hawthorne Center for Innovation presents: >> >> >> Where: California Baptist University >> Riverside, CA >> >> When: Saturday, 22 May / 9:00 - noon >> >> Cost: FREE >> >> What: * Introduction to Squeak Smalltalk for Programmers* >> A fast-paced, college-level introduction to the dynamic language Squeak >> Smalltalk. Squeak is a modern open-source development environment for the >> classic Smalltalk-80 programming language. Smalltalk is a purely >> object-oriented language with little syntactic baggage, and Squeak offers a >> freely accessible and portable implementation of its ideas. Despite being >> the first purely object-oriented language and environment, Smalltalk is in >> many ways still far ahead of its successors in promoting a vision of an >> environment where *everything is an object*, and anything can change at >> run-time. . >> >> Presenter: Ben Cooper has been Senior Researcher-in-Residence at the >> Hawthorne Center for Innovation, located in the Fontana area, for some 8 >> years. Over the years Ben has taught Squeak classes to groups of >> homeschoolers and is starting to work on some web-based projects with the >> help of several of his alumni. With a group of researchers from academia and >> industry, Ben is also developing several products that will revolutionize >> the computer industry at the hardware level using Squeak Smalltalk >> as the language to "marry" with this NextGen hardware. >> >> How Should Attend: Individuals familiar with the fundamentals of computer >> programming. >> >> To RSVP: Sign up with Donna from the Hawthorne Center for Innovation at: >> do...@hawcenter.org / 909-271-6011 for meeting location. >> >> >> >> >> >> Read more (some information now out of date): >> http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/wolfgang.kreutzer/cosc205/smalltalk1.html >> >> About Us: www.hawcenter.org >> >> _______________________________________________ >> LinuxUsers mailing list >> LinuxUsers@socallinux.org >> http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers >> >> _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list LinuxUsers@socallinux.org http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
