SMALLTALK Presented by Latasha Gibbs, Natasha Harrison, and Robert G. Lewis “Common languages are tools, Smalltalk is a piece of art.”

History at a Glance…

History  Smalltalk roots reach back to the early seventies when many ideas were first explored in the context of the Dynabook project at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.  Smalltalk was initially envisioned as a simple language suitable to be used by children who didn’t have any prior computer knowledge.  Developed by Alan Klay on October 1972.

History  The first Smalltalk system contained 1000 lines of code which computed  The next version of Smalltalk was called Smalltalk 72, which was implemented in assembly code.  Smalltalk 72 was used to teach object- oriented Programming (OOP) to high school students.

History  From there came Smalltalk 74 and Smalltalk  Newer version now have the capability to provide better graphics and information retrieved.

“In essence, Smalltalk is a programming language focused on human beings rather than the computer.” - Alan Knight

Comparison with other languages

Language Comparisons RubyObj-C Smalltalk- 80 C++Java Typing Dynamic Static Dynamic Static Inheritance mix-insingle multiple single Metaclass yes no Private Method yes noyes Templates Not needed yesno Garbage Collection yes noyes Class Variables yesnoyes

Language Comparisons Smalltalk ‘Hello, world’ printN1 This is what a GUI representation would look like if you used CINCOM Smalltalk’s VisualWorks. Java public static void main (String []args) { System.out.println(“Hello World”); }

Examples of Usage

l Pocket Smalltalk tm IDE A free open source programming environment that lets developers write smalltalk applications for Palm Powered handhelds, and other small devices

Smalltalk Future Focus  IBM VisualAge Smalltalk Enterprise V6.0 is now available.  Allows programmers to create and deploy e-business applications.  Includes XML Schema Support  Smalltalk is well-supported by IBM and many other vendors.

New Language Concepts  Syntax is very similar to natural language  Syntax pattern is always object then verb  Three basic linguistic constructs  ‘Hello World’ as Uppercase UNARY CASE  1+2 BINARY CASE  ‘Hello World’ beginsWith: ‘Hello’ NAMED PARAMERTERS

Bibliography   te_aug81/design-principles-behind- smalltalk.html te_aug81/design-principles-behind- smalltalk.html  