SmalltalkInspect

Here at Smalltalk Inspect, the summer heat is not passing by without a trace. Both Sebastian and Marten were unavailable, but we did an interview with Craig Latta about his progress on Spoon and - more importantly - Naiad (which means Name and Identity are Distinct), the module system for the Smalltalk of the future. So you see we're doing our best to keep the podcast up and inform you about what's new in and aroung the Smalltalk world, even in the hottest time of the year!

While Spoon aims at identifying the minimum amount of Smalltalk code to build a working system on top of, from basic I/O to network communications and loading additional code, NAIAD is Craig's attempt to building a Smalltalk-Platform independent way of defining, loading and running modules within a NAIAD runtime envorinment, which Spoon can be seen as an example of.

A system like NAIAD offers many interesting options, like the exchange of code between Smalltalk platforms without any porting effort. Just imagine one single code base of your favorite framework with no porting or maintenance forks. We also cover a cool concept of moving code to a deployment image/object space by running tests and only move code that's been run - what a cool way of defining Code Coverage! Only tested code in y our deliverable!

There's a lot more good stuff in the episode and you should definitely listen to this episode if you ever dreamed of building a deliverable from the ground up, securing your executable by guaranteeing that there's not a single line of unneeded code in it and lots more.
If you're interested in reading more about Spoon and Naiad, you can visit Craig's blog named "thisContext".

Download MP3 (19 MB)

[Update] We've just updated a few links because somebody had messed the whole thing up a little ;-) So if you wondered what some linked documents have to do with what this text said they would, please try again now.[/Update]

We're continuing our journey to areas where only few people would think they'll find Smalltalk. This time we talk to Jecel Assumpcao Jr. about the SiliconSqueak project, an attempt to build Computers to natively run Smalltalk bytecodes.

Jecel starts by taking us back to the early 70'ies when Xerox Parc had machines that were optimized to run Smalltalk, through the eighties when people found out you can also run bytcodes really fast (whatever that may have meant on hardware of that day) on standard architectures, right into the near future where the SiliconSqueak project will offer a fully functional computer that can run Squeak Smalltalk, and thus Scratch and Etoys natively.

We're talking about why you'd want to run Smalltalk on bare metal, the different techniques for accelerating Smalltalk code in Hardware, the implications of multi-core and multi-processor architectures on Smalltalk and programming in general. We also cover some Smalltalk history and so make the whole thing once again an interesting and inspiring discussion.

If you want to learn more about the things we've covered, here's a list of links for you:

• The SiliconSqueak project web site reflects the state of the project back in 2009:
  The processor described there has the 32 bit "microcode". This evolved later to a version with 16 bit microcode plus an "ALU Array" for high performance numerical code which is what is described in the slides for my more recent presentations. The slides don't make much sense without explanations since they are rather abstract, but here is what Jecel presented for his PhD "qualification exam" in March.



• We didn't go very deeply into adaptive compilation, partial evaluation and stuff like that (the slides about Self 2.0 and 3.0 would make more sense with a little text explaining what the colors mean) but a lot of what we talked about is there. I also gave a talk about the instruction set details, but it was only 10 minutes long so lots of stuff is missing




• A visual history of Jecel's work on children's computers and an overview of other Smalltalk-related computer projects



• Good introductory material about FPGAs



• Jecel also was interviewed on James Robertson's old podcast called Industry Misinterpretations, you can find a download link for that episode here.



• Ian Piumarta has written two papers about defining the semantics of object oriented languages in terms of operations on associative
  memories, as I mentioned during our talk. These are available here:
  
  • http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011003_abmdb.pdf
  
  
  • http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2009002_qod.pdf

Download MP3 (34,5 MB)

In this episode we talk to Igor Stasenko about ways to call external code in Smalltalk code, especially on Pharo Smalltalk (most of the FFI discussion is also valid for Squeak). Igor is a software engineer at the Inria Research Institute in Lille, France, the inofficial (?) epicenter of the Pharo world. His job there is to maintain and look after all and everything related to "infrastructure" in and around Pharo Smalltalk, including the VM.

We start our discussion with the question whether and when you'd want to interface to external libraries before we speak about to the available technologies in Pharo to do so. This ranges from how to declare external functions and define output and input data structures to hand between the Smalltalk Image and external functions.

We not only cover FFI (Foreign Function Interface) but also speak about Alien, which started life in the Newspeak project.

A discussion on such technical stuff as calling native code and external libraries from within a VM wouldn't be complete without some talk on the actual VM (Cog), so we also cover the cog VM and Eliot Miranda's work on latest Smalltalk VM technologies.

The third part of the interview concentrates on NativeBoost, a project started by Igor that allows to define executable machine code within a Smalltalk image and run it (natively) under the control of the Smalltalk image. Igor used it to use the cairo Graphics Library as one of the backends for Athens- a vector graphics framework for Pharo (see video here)

You can learn more at the following sites:

• Homepage of the Pharo Smalltalk Project, where you can also download the Pharo one-click image


• Short overview of FFI


• Video of a talk by Igor on FFI at ESUG



• Code to load FFI into a Pharo image:

  Gofer new
  
    squeaksource: 'MetacelloRepository';
  
    package: 'ConfigurationOfFFI';
  
    load.
  
  (Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfFFI) project lastVersion load
  
  

  
  


• Alien on the squeak wiki


• NativeBoost project page and its Jenkins Build Server


• Video of a talk by Igor on NativeBoost at ESUG


• NativeBoost OpenGL-binding


• OpenGLSpecs, A tool for parsing and analyzing the OpenGL spec files


• Igor's Blog named "My Computer Adventures"

Download MP3 (37,3 MB)

Manche Smalltalk-Projekte entstehen aus dem Untergrund. So auch das, worüber uns Udo Schneider diesmal erzählt.

Wie kommt Pharo Smalltalk in ein Data Leakage Prevention System? Wer kommt denn auf die Idee, ein Security Device mit einer Seaside-Oberfläche auszustatten? Nun, Udo hat es so gemacht: In seiner Firma wurde eine einfach zu bedienende, hübsch aussehende Administrationsoberfläche benötigt. Da baute er einen Prototypen in Smalltalk und Seaside und überzeugte mit dem Ergebnis nicht nur seinen Chef, sondern auch gleich noch den Hardwarehersteller und ging so gleich mal allem Wenn und Aber aus dem Weg, in dem er einfach in kürzester Zeit ein gutes Ergebnis demonstrierte. So gibt es nun da draussen ein Stück Hardware zu kaufen, dessen Web-Administrationsoberfläche in Smalltalk und Seaside umgesetzt ist. Und die Kunden finden's gut. Udo erzählt ein bisschen aus dem Nähkästchen, wie das ganze zustande kam, welche Erfahrungen er bei der Umsetzung gemacht hat, und was er zu Smalltalk, Seaside und dem ganzen Rest gelernt hat.

Wer Smalltalk Inspect kennt, weiss, dass es bei uns immer auch ein paar Bonus-Themen gibt. Und auch diesmal enttäuschen wir in dieser Disziplin ganz und gar nicht. Wir beginnen wieder mal irgendwo in der Atari-Smalltalk-Welt (Wusstet Ihr eigentlich, liebe Hörer, dass Alan Kay auch eine Weile bei Atari gearbeitet hat?) und diskutieren ein wenig über Dolphin Smalltalk, das sich leider seit einiger Zeit nicht mehr so recht weiterentwickelt. Ausserdem schauen wir uns um in der Welt der Web-Applikationen und setzen uns mit der Frage auseinander, welchen Platz Seaside in der aktuellen Web-Framework-Landschaft ausfüllt. So wagen wir auch einen Blick in die Welt von Browser-seitigen Applikationen mit Hilfe von Frameworks wie Cappuccino oder SproutCore an und beleuchten, wie Smalltalk in dieser schönen neuen GUI-Welt zurecht kommt oder kommen kann.

Es ist also wieder mal ein Leckerbissen, was wir da für Euch zusammengerührt haben...

Download MP3 (44,3 MB)

Wir möchten gerne unsere Hörer und alle, die es noch werden möchten, zu einem Stammtisch am 21.04.2012 in Frankfurt am Main einladen. Das ganze findet ab ca. 18:00 Uhr im Intercity Hotel am Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt am Main statt (Details auf unserer Doodle-Seite).
Bisher haben sich bereits ein paar unserer bisherigen Interviewpartner angemeldet, und wir freuen uns über jeden Besucher. Der Ort ist so gewählt, dass er zentral und gut erreichbar ist. Das Hotel bietet auch günstige Zimmer am Wochenende an, für Leute mit weiterer Anreise (einfach im Internet buchen).
Wir freuen uns über kurze Vorträge zu laufenden Projekten, neuen Projektideen oder einfach nur den Austausch von Erfahrungen und Ideen. Wer einen Beamer mitbringen kann, sollte sich kurz bei uns melden, bisher haben wir keinen organisiert. Auch Sponsoren sind willkommen (erste Anfragen dazu liegen vor, wir finden sicher auch Ideen, wie sich Sponsoren präsentieren können - kommt einfach auf uns zu).

Wir würden unsere Hörer gerne kennen lernen, vielleicht neue Ideen für Interviews oder andere Formate sammeln und uns mit Smalltalkern aus diversen Projekten und Dialekten austauschen.

Wer gerne teilnehmen möchte, sollte sich auf unserer Doodle-Seite eintragen, damit wir mit dem Hotel die passende Raumgröße vereinbaren können, und damit andere Interessenten sich ein Bild machen können, ob es sich lohnt, zu kommen.