

Redline Smalltalk for the JVM - brudgers
http://www.redline.st/

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jamesladd
Hi there, I'm the creator of Redline and I very much want to complete it but
other work and life items have got in the way. I hope to return to it just as
soon as I can. \- James.

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wtbob
Hey, be proud of what you were able to achieve, and look forward to the day
when you can achieve any more.

Smalltalk was and is an amazing tool, one of the 100-year languages (if not,
perhaps, one of the 1,000-year languages). The JVM is awfully popular, and
will be for awhile. Java stole the steam from what should have been the
Smalltalk decades; it's appropriate for there to be a decent Smalltalk on the
JVM.

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colindean
Ooo! Something I can comment on!

I fired up Redline a few months ago, attempting to "evaluate it" for a
potential work project - day job is writing connectivity solutions for an
enterprise search engine using a an in-house Java framework, with actual
implementations in both Java and Scala. I used Smalltalk for a few classes in
college in the mid-2000s and jumped at the opportunity to see how it went for
this little test.

Redline needs some TLC. The basics are there, but it seems like much of the
standard library is not yet implemented. It'd be really awesome to see it come
up to speed, and I wish I had time to contribute to it myself.

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brudgers
What does the Java interop look like?

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colindean
AFAICT, it's not really there yet. I could barely make it work within the
scope of the framework I was using.

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duncanawoods
After watching a few Alan Kay talks where he pines for Smalltalk, I happened
to watch this Robert Martin talk "What killed Smalltalk could kill Ruby".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX3iRjKj7C0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX3iRjKj7C0)

The tldw reasons he gives for why Smalltalk died:

\- too easy to make a mess where adding complexity would be punished late.

\- arrogance - community isolated itself from the world and did not address
common industry needs

\- commercial only - alternative free languages dominated

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vixen99
Maybe related to your third reason, as previously noted, IT-related book
publisher and seller O'Reilly appears (open to correction) not to offer one
single book about Pharo or Smalltalk.

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davelnewton
OTOH, there are a bunch of books out for Squeak, and most old Smalltalk books
are still very relevant. (And I'd argue some of the best old Smalltalk books
are required reading for people that _don 't_ work in Smalltalk.)

Re; Pharo, yeah, there's only a few self-published books.

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protomyth
Is it still being developed? I see a funding campaign from 2013 and no recent
code commits.

