Does anyone else remember F-Script? A "Smalltalk-inspired scripting language" for MacOS X, providing full interoperation with Objective C and the whole Cocoa frameworks system. The last update was 5 years ago, which is a pity, because 1. It was so well integrated with MacOS X (as it was then) that it needs rebuilding wih each macOS release. 2. It was so well integrated with MacOS X that it was restricted to MacOS X; there wasn't anything to port to Windows or Unix. 3. It was Smalltalk - *inspired* but not Smalltalk, so there was no flow of ideas or code between Smalltalk and F-Script. For example, there never was an SUnit for F-Script.
Does anyone else remember Susie? (Scripting using a Smalltalk Interpreter engine.) I've been meaning to fix the problem with a 64-bit build but wondering who to tell. It seems as if reviving Susie or GST ought to pay off more sooner than starting from scratch. If you want a "class-less" language inspired by Smalltalk with minimalist syntax, you really MUST look at Self. I used to use XLisp/Stat a lot, and while I loved it, I can't say that not having classes struck me as a strength. Curly braces trace back to BCPL -- which I once set out to write a compiler for. They were and are a bad idea. If you want a scripting language inspired by JavaScript, with braces and sans classes, may I suggest JavaScript? It satisfies 8 out of your criteria out-of-the-box, and node.js with a vast library of stuff to script with, including testing frameworks, already exists. I'm not sure if it satisfies criterion 6 or not, but then I'm not sure what criterion 6 means or why you would care. There are programming languages I dislike *as* languages but use for the sake of the libraries they give me access to, S, for example, ticks quite a few of your boxes. As a language, it's pretty awful. (In large part *because* it ticks those boxes.) BUT the packages! Oh gosh, the *packages* ! All the work I don't have to do! All the work I *COULDN'T* have done! So, one approach is to build your new teenage mutant ninja scripting language on top of something like node.js. Go nuts with your syntax, but make the data structures fully JavaScript-compatible so that you can use existing npm packages from your language. I wish GNU Smalltalk were still maintained. One day I must try to figure out why printing floats crashes. On Sat, 2 Dec 2023 at 00:11, Craig Johnson <cr...@hivemind.net> wrote: > > for those who are interested. > > https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/5373567/Smallscript-A-Smalltalk-Inspired-Scripting-Languag >
