[General] Intro and two questions

[Daniel Ingalls]

Hello Owen -

> Hi, I'm a newbie here, and will be taking a GLASS (Gemstone Linux
> Apache Seaside Smalltalk) workshop next week at the Santa Fe Complex.
>    http://sfcomplex.org/wordpress/2009/03/glass

I think I remember your name from Xerox PARC days.

> Dave West, who's sponsoring the workshop, suggested we look at several
> object technologies, including Squeak and LK.
>
> This brings up two questions:
>
> 1 - What is the relationship between Squeak and LK?

Heheh.  One person was a principal in both projects.

Also, LK as it's currently distributed uses the Morphic architecture  
(which came to Squeak from SELF via John Maloney, and thence to LK via  
me)

> For example, can
> Squeak on a server "talk" to a browser on a client?

Yes, but this is more in the Seaside model than LK.  Could you use LK  
to do this?  Again, yes.

>  Does it somehow
> integrate into Squeak?

Does LK?  No.  Not that it couldn't, of course.

> 2 - Javascript needs care in handling .. Doug Crockford's nifty book
> Javascript, the Good Parts, along with his website:
>    http://javascript.crockford.com/
> .. strongly suggests Javascript, when handled correctly, forms a very
> good object platform.  But the trick is building up the subset of the
> language that is useful and safe, and finding the right patterns of
> use that makes it "Squeak-Lite".

Mmm, not sure I like that name but yes, with inspiration from Doug and  
a few ideas of our own, we have a wonderfully usable dynamic object  
model.

> So the question is: have you a document showing how to use Javascript
> as you did building LK? How to build a nifty object system out of
> Javascript?  It certainly is a surprising language when you take a
> close look.

Sadly we have not written much about this yet, though all the sources  
are available of course.  Much of the work beginning with the  
Prototype library, and then merging other useful bits was done by  
Krzysztof Palacz in our group.  Along the way we learned a lot about  
various pitfalls and ways to avoid them that would be valuable to  
other travelers on the path.

Maybe if there is a JavaScript conference on Maui...  ;-).

Good to hear from you

	- Dan