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Smalltalk for Not Yet Techies"Computer Careers: Expand Your High Tech Jobs Programming Range by Learning the Computer Language that was Invented for Human Beings"by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career |
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Smalltalk is one of the best little known computer programming languages. Smalltalk has its roots in one of the most fertile spots in computer history, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The scientists at PARC also came up with the graphics user interface and personal computers (at a time when nobody thought there was a market for such things, even if a computer could be made small enough to fit into a house.). "In essence, Smalltalk is a programming language focused on human beings rather than the computer."
"I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind."
Are you ready for a computer career with a language whose developer worked on the first PC and the first graphical user interface (that is, such as Windows), and which is so advanced that although it’s nearly 30 years old, Smalltalk is an object oriented language that's still more advanced than Java? You may be wondering why you’ve never heard of it. I was excited while doing this research, and Smalltalk still seems like an amazing language. Small Talk programmers are highly excited by its power and very loyal to it. Smalltalk does go back to the early 1970's, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Alan Kay was the primary "visionary" who borrowed ideas from Simula and LOGO as the basis of what was to be the programming language of a portable, computerized notebook called the Dynabook. He envisioned that with The Dynabook people would be able to carry their computers around with them for easy use and accessRemember, in the early 1970s your typical computer needed its own special room with its own air conditioning and electrical supply. He also realized that Dynabook could be connected to stereos (Note for you young uns – in early 1970s nobody had ever heard of compact disks. It was a time when we still used antiques.) for generating music and to public communications lines. The premise of Smalltalk from the very beginning was to be a point-and-click interface with multiple windows each executing their own codeNo other computer system at the time implemented such an interface, and no consumer machine did until the Macintosh over 13 years later. In an interview with Time magazine, Steve Jobs, commenting on his famous and historical visit to XEROX PARC which resulted in founding Apple noted that: He was "blinded" by Xerox's graphical user interface and had overlooked both the company's Smalltalk programming language and its powerful office network. "If I'd only stayed another 20 minutes," he said. When Alan left Xerox he took many of his graphical user-interface ideas to Apple, from which the Lisa was born and we all know it was history from then on. Smalltalk was thus developed long before C, let alone C’s object oriented cousin C++, or Java which is very recentSmalltalk is a "pure" object-oriented model, which means that everything in the environment is treated as an object. It might very well be the most pure object-oriented language in existence. That's because everything, even Integers, Floats, Characters and Booleans are objects to which you can send messages. Even messages themselves are objects. Supporters say this consistent approach is what gives it its amazing flexibility, as well as its reflective capabilities (the ability of a program to alter its logic at runtime). Smalltalk also invented (long ago) the concept of a cross-platform language by creating a "virtual machine."A virtual machine is a computer program’s software model of a computer. It’s an "ideal" computer that is being simulated on a real computer. All code is compiled into instructions that the "virtual" computer can understand. The virtual computer handles the translation to the real computer’s hardware. This gives it portability from one platform to the other, because the virtual computer doesn’t care whether it’s residing inside a PC, a Mac or a Unix. Smalltalk - Page 2 |
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Permission is granted to reprint the above article in an ezine or on a website as long as it is reprinted in full, with no changes, with full credit and with this contact information and link included at the bottom. All other rights reserved. Copyright 2007 by Info Ring Press All Rights Reserved. Computer Careers (Home) Sitemap Contact Privacy Info Ring Press Richard Stooker PO Box 617 130-G Ballwin Manor Dr Ballwin, MO 63011 (636) 394-2052 rick@inforingpress.com |