Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

If you're interested in either Ruby or Smalltalk (or both!), and you're in the Raleigh NC area, I'll be speaking to the Ruby Brigade there on May 20:

An Introduction To Seaside

Seaside is an open source, cross-Smalltalk web application framework. Like Ruby on Rails, it is "opinionated software". Unlike Rails, it's fairly heretical in its approach to building stateful web applications. I'll introduce Seaside, cover some Smalltalk basics, and answer questions from the audience.

You can get the meeting details here.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, ruby

Blaine Buxton will be presenting Seaside tomorrow in KC:

If you are in Kansas City tomorrow and want to learn more about Seaside, then come to BarCampKC. I will be giving a presentation on Seaside. It's the one you can download from SqueakMap, but beefed up. I've included how to do GLORP, script.aculo.us, and more! I will be showing off Smalltalk and Squeak in the process. If you ever wondered why Smalltalk was so cool, now is the time to find out. See you there!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

I have a script that fetches the schedule data from the dabbledb page, but it had a small problem - and thus, there was some missing data in the agenda (and detail) views. That's been addressed now, so you should see everything now. Why not register?

Niall Ross has posted a lot of updated information about the coding contest:

• Overview
• Administrative Details
• Contest Details
• Banding pattern information (contest specs)

Technorati Tags: sts08, smalltalk solutions, coding contest

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at Namespaces.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, cincom smalltalk, namespaces

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this tutorial from James Foster:

This hands-on tutorial will present Seaside and walk through the process of building an application using GLASS (GemStone, Linux, Apache, Seaside, and Smalltalk). Topics covered include handling user logins, where to put session data vs. application data, building reusable components, styling a web site with CSS, and an introduction to Javascript. In a few hours you will build a web site for a children's soccer team that tracks games, players, and other information. (Because we are using an object database, we will not cover object/relational mapping!) You may bring your own computer or team up with someone else who brought one. Participants with a 64-bit machine may wish to pre-install VMware Server (free for Linux or Windows) or VMware Fusion (for Macintosh) so they can use a ready-to-run virtual appliance. Otherwise, a server will be available that can be accessed with a Squeak-based client. While familiarity with Smalltalk is a prerequisite, no prior Seaside or GemStone/S knowledge is required and the Seaside knowledge gained will apply to non-GemStone platforms as well.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, seaside, glass

Today must be DRM day - here's the RIAA, convinced that we'd love DRM, if only we would give it a chance:

Not so fast, said Hughes, who predicted that DRM would reemerge in a big way. "I think there is going to be a shift," he told the audience. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services and they will eventually mean the return of DRM."

Hughes also said that DRM must change so that the public sees it less as a sort of policeman that locks music a way. He would prefer a mode where consumers don't notice DRM at all. "People just want music when they want it," he said. "It's about access. If they get that then they don't care about DRM."

Yeah, there's a pleasant theory. Sadly, the whole PlaysForSure fiasco drills a rather huge whole in that sorry excuse for thinking. The public doesn't care about DRM - but they do care about having stuff they bought stop working.

The MPAA is even dumber:

Fritz Attaway, executive vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said: "We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us."

Translation: "You're not customers, you're dirty rotten thieves"

Technorati Tags: stupidity, copyright

Because my neighbor downloading an episode of "Bones" via Bittorrent is just as bad as running a crack house (this is in LA):

In an ordinance just adopted, the five-member board is declaring that piracy "substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county's citizens, its businesses and its visitors."

Can someone send the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors a thesaurus, with the phrase "sense of proportion" underlined?

Technorati Tags: stupidity

And Microsoft may be developing a deep case of the stupids as well. Here's what it looks like they might allow NBC to get from the Zune store:

The second story is about NBC shows coming to the Microsoft Zune media player, but with one feature NBC wanted added to the device: the copyright cop. If you buy a NBC show and transfer it to your Zune, a small application will check your Zune for "pirated" shows and movies that weren't purchased from the Zune store, and delete them. It's rumored that this is why the NBC/Apple partnership ended at the iTMS and they removed shows -- because Apple refused to build in this kind of capability.

Yeah, that sure makes me want to run out and buy a Zune. I've ripped DVD's to my hard drive for the sole purpose of watching a movie while traveling (carrying the DVD and case is too much of a pain). In the (incredibly small) brain of Jeff Zucker, that's an action that gives him permission to erase the "offending" content after I get something from the Zune store. Umm, thanks, but no thanks.

In that NY Times story, MS states explicitly that they won't do that:

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

That sounds good, but recall: this is the outfit that just told you to take a hike with "PlaysForSure". They shouldn't be surprised that out confidence level in them is low....

Technorati Tags: stupidity, tv

There's a live calendar for Smalltalk Solutions 2008 on the STIC home page now; it's written in Seaside, of course (the calendar, that is). I'll be tossing it on the cincomsmalltalk.com events page today as well.

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at Shared Variables - which are the successor to Class Variables in older versions of the product (and other Smalltalk implementations).

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, shared variables, class variables

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Randal Schwartz:

Now that Seaside is being established by ever-widening audiences as a flexible and practical web application framework, many are asking the question "but how do I save my data?". In this talk, I'll present and compare an overview of the various solutions for persistence in Seaside, including: saving the image regularly, image segments, Magma, GLORP, and emStone/S. Smalltalk knowledge is presumed, of course.

Randal is a well known developer in the Perl world who's come back to Smalltalk recently - because of Seaside. You can listen to Randal regularly on FLOSS Weekly

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, seaside

Here's a photo of the non-tech (i.e., business) side of the Cincom Smalltalk team - I'm not in it because - for personal reasons - I couldn't attend the meeting in person:

I can still recall buying a second 40 MB drive for my first x86 pc, and thinking that it would never fill up. I currently have over 3 TB of storage in my office, and HP is talking about petabyte storage. The mind boggles.

Technorati Tags: storage

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Vassili Bykov:

Programming environments are commonly built as sets of tools, where a tool has the shape of a pre-composed window displaying and manipulating a set of domain objects. This talk takes a critical look at that approach and presents Hopscotch, an application framework and development environment based on different concepts. Hopscotch is the IDE and the application framework of Newspeak, a new language and development platform inspired by Smalltalk and Self.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, sts08, hopscotch, newspeak

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at Smalltalk's introspection capabilities.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, metaprogramming, introspection

The MySQL buy just looks worse for Sun all the time. The uproar over closed source has apparently ended; they now say that all of the high end features will remain open. So much for the idea of making MySQL a profitable business for Sun; maybe Jonathan Schwartz can start rummaging through the couch cushions for spare change to make back that $1B ?

Technorati Tags: Sun, MySQL, open+source, stupidity

Here's a question I get asked from time to time - "Why Seaside?" As in, why not Rails, or some other web application framework? Well, it's all about Simplicity. Here's the "Getting Started" for RoR, that takes you to "Hello World". It's not bad - but compare it with Seaside:

• Subclass WAComponent (Call the class HelloWorld)
• Add a method that looks like this:

renderContentOn: html
	html text: 'hello World'.

And this method on the class side:

canBeRoot
	^true

• Execute this line of code: HelloWorld registerAsApplication: 'helloworld'

Now, using VW 7.6, browse this url: http://localhost:7777/seaside/helloworld

And that's all there is to it. Now, why not take a look at the tutorial?

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, web

Gilad Bracha has announced that Newspeak will be released under an open source license (Apache). It should be interesting to learn more at StS 2008. For those of you who don't know what newspeak is, it's a new language based on Smalltalk and Self (with other influences as well) - Gilad did a video on it.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Paul Baumann:

GemKit is an open-source tool that was first created by GemStone Professional Services. Intercontinental Exchange has fixed and enhanced the original Store port of GemKit and is releasing these improvements to the community. Anyone interested in managing GemStone source code using Store will be interested in this technology demonstration. The demonstration will extend beyond GemKit into automated release tools and code management practices.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk solutions, sts08, smalltalk, gemstone, gemkit

Niall Ross has announced a one day extension for submissions to the StS 2008 Coding Contest:

When I announced this contest, I set the submission time for Friday May 30th.  However Saturday would be easier for some people.  So I've agreed to extend the submission time.  Official submission time now closes on Saturday June 1st at 18:00 UK time.

Make sure you register for the conference, too - it's coming up quick!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, smalltalk solutions, STIC, coding contest

Dave Buck is tossing around the idea of offering an advanced Smalltalk course:

I've been tossing around the idea of developing advanced Smalltalk courses and was wondering what interest there may be in them. They could be delivered as open enrollment courses or on-site courses.

I was supposed to be in Cincinnati this week, attending a meeting. I had a personal thing come up that made it impossible for me to travel this week, but I still wanted to be part of the meeting. Even without a lot of preparation, this is a lot easier than it used to be.

My colleague Arden is at the meeting with his Mac, and I have an iChat video session open on the room. This gives me a fairly decent feel for the meeting. At the same time, we have the audio for that muted and I have a skype out call going to get onto a speaker phone in the room.

That's all going by wired networking here, and wifi in the meeting room itself. THis is all pretty cool. The only downside? If I get up to get coffee, it's just as noticeable as if I were there in person :)

Looking to learn more about Smalltalk in Japanese? My colleague, Katsuya Ichiisi, has translated both the Smalltalk tutorial and the Seaside tutorial. Enjoy!

ESUG - being held in Amsterdam this year - is making their call for participation:

16th International Smalltalk Joint Conference - Call for Contributions

August 25-29, 2008 - Amsterdam, the Netherlands

http://www.esug.org/conferences/2008/

---

For the past 16 years, the European Smalltalk User Group (ESUG) has organised the International Smalltalk Conference, a lively forum on cutting edge software technologies that attract people from both academia and industry for a whole week. The attendees are both engineers using Smalltalk in business and students and teachers using Smalltalk both for research and didactic purposes.

As every year, this year's edition of the largest European Smalltalk event will include the regular Smalltalk developers conference with renowned invited speakers, a Smalltalk camp that proves fruitful for interactions and discussions. Besides, this year will be held the 4th edition of the Innovation Technology Awards where prizes will be awarded to authors of best pieces of Smalltalk-related projects.

You can support the ESUG conference in many different ways:

• Sponsor the conference. New sponsoring packages are described at http://www.esug.org/supportesug/becomeasponsor/
• Submit a talk, a software or a paper to one of the events. See below.
• Attend the conference. We'd like to beat the previous record of attendance (116 people at Koethen, Germany in 2004)!
• Students can get free registration and hosting if they enroll into the the Student Volunteers program. See below.

The conference features the following events:

• Camp Smalltalk - There will be a Smalltalk camp the 23-24th of august
• Developers Forum
• Technology Forum

Developers Forum : International Smalltalk Developers Conference

---

This year we are looking for YOUR experience on using Smalltalk. The list of topics includes, but is not limited to the following:

• XP practices
• Development tools
• Experience reports
• Model driven development
• Web development
• Team management
• Meta-Modeling
• Security
• New libraries & frameworks
• Educational material
• Embedded systems and robotics
• SOA and Web services
• Interaction with other programming languages

Submissions due on 1st June 2008

Notification of acceptance on 15 of June 2008 More information at http://www.esug.org/conferences/2008

How to sumbit?

---

Pay attention: the places are limited so do not wait till the last minute to apply. Prospective presenters should submit a request to esug-info@esug.org following the template below. Please use this template since the email will be automatically processed!

Subject: [ESUG 2008 Developers] + your name
First Name:
Last Name:
Email where you can always be reached:
Title:
Abstract:
Bio:

Any presentation not respecting this form will be discarded automatically

Technology Forum

---

We are proud to announce the 4th Innovation Technology Awards. The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive, respectively, 500 Euros, 300 Euros and 200 Euros during an awards ceremony at the conference. Developers of any Smalltalk-based software are welcome to compete.

More information at http://www.esug.org/conferences/2008

Student Volunteer Program

---

If you are a student wanting to attend ESUG, have you considered being a student volunteer? Student volunteers help keep the conference running smoothly; in return, they have free accommodations, while still having most of the time to enjoy the conference.

More information at
http://www.esug.org/conferences/2008
http://www.esug.org/conferences/16thinternationalsmalltalkjointconference2008/studentvolunteersprogram/

We hope to see you there and have fun together.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Gary Short is looking to get a Smalltalk implementation onto the DLR. We looked at that idea briefly for ObjectStudio, but decided to go with the VisualWorks VM instead.

Technorati Tags: dlr, visual studio

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at one of the more insidious sources of errors in Cincom Smalltalk - the Undeclared dictionary.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, undeclared

Spotted in CNET News.com:

Sun's business model does not work and it hasn't worked for a long time. Moreover, open source, MySQL, StorageTek, and SaaS (software as a service) will not fix it.

CNet follows with a few more details, but not a lot of ideas. Here are a couple that might work:

• Fire Schwartz. The kind of CEO who spends $1B on a $60M, revenue-neutral business is the kind of CEO that Sun can't afford. Who knows what shiny piece of non-profitable open source software will catch his fancy next? Whatever it is, Sun can't afford it
• Start charging money for things that cost money to make. Being free can make you popular, but it can also lead to simple questions, like: "how do we make payroll?"

Will that happen? Nah, the pain isn't severe enough yet. Sun will have a layoff here, a layoff there - eventually, someone will notice that Schwartz brings negative value and hire a cleaner to sort through Sun's mess. In the meantime? Expect lots of wasted motion

Technorati Tags: Sun, stupidity

I received a number of complaints about the Google calendar widget, so I sat down and generated a simpler layout it this morning. If you visit www.stic.st, you'll find this:

View the Smalltalk Solutions 2008 Agenda here. Interested in the full details? View the Detailed Agenda here.

Agenda by Day:

• June 19
• June 20
• June 21

Comments? Send them here.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, smalltalk solutions

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at dealing with file paths in a platform neutral fashion.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, platform neutrality

It was bound to happen sooner or later - I posted the podcast with duplicated content last night. I've just reposted with the extra content pulled, and updated the site. Sorry about that!

This week we had a very full set of news, Smalltalk and otherwise. We discussed:

• The Newspeak video with Gilad Bracha
• The Smalltalk Solutions schedule
• The Release of a new Seaside book
• Microsoft Mesh
• Twitter troubles
• Clutter
• The recent SQL injection attacks
• Gemstone and Ruby

It's a pretty packed conversation :) As always, send feedback to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook, Ning, and iTunes. You can also vote for the podcast at Podcast Alley.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, smalltalk solutions, squeak, newspeak, glass, seaside

I've seen a lot of scifi flicks that used "electronic insects" to scout - but I had no idea they were close to a reality:

British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives.

Every time I turn around, some scifi thing from a movie I've seen materializes...

Scoble:

Yahoo is a bleeding animal. Left lying, gasping for its breath, after a larger animal (Microsoft) struck and then walked away after it proved too difficult to eat.

Reality:

Yahoo's revenues were $1.82 billion for the first quarter of 2008, a nine percent increase compared to $1.672 billion for the same period of 2007. Marketing-services revenues were $1.572 billion for the first quarter of 2008, a seven percent increase over the year-ago period. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2008 was $1.063 million, an 11 percent increase over the first quarter of 2007.

Not great, but black is better than red. For all the verbiage, this is good news. Neither company has to go through the raw chaos that a merger would have brought.

Mathew Ingram thinks Yahoo should have taken the deal:

In my view, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has gone way beyond fiduciary duty and has been effectively blocking this deal in any way possible. I expect to see the stock tank, and deservedly so. If I were a shareholder, I would be calling for Yang’s head. This deal was by far the best opportunity the company had to achieve some value.

Depends. It would have been a nice deal for the large shareholders, I suppose. For the company and its products? Not so much.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, yahoo

Well, it's not all peaches and cream on the Mac all the time. I just got a new external HD for the machine, and started setting it up. It was recognized right away, but it was (of course) formatted into NTFS. I've never had a problem just reformatting to a native FS, so I unmounted the drive, pulled up Disk Utility, and got started.

Oops.

It turns out, there are issues with these drives and Leopard - I could not get it formatted. Google to the rescue though - a quick search pulled up a support page with an email query tool. After I sent that, I got some nice (not linkable - gah!) information - with some fairly complex sounding directions, but hey - they worked. Now all I have to do is get my data reorganized....

Since that data isn't easily linkable, let me throw it here so other people might be able to find it - this is what you do if you tried formatting the drive, and it's now in a mostly useless state. If you have a Mac running Tiger around, there's a simpler answer - prepare the drive on the that, then move it. Otherwise:

1. Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
2. Select the external drive and click on the Partition tab
3. Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and divide the drive into 2 (or more) partitions
4. Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided, click on the GUID Partition Table radio button. Click OK.
5. Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
6. Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted into multiple drives with GUID Partition Table scheme.
   Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
7. When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility (recommended)
8. Relaunch the Disk Utility, select the external drive
9. and click on the Partition tab
10. Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and select One (1) partition.
11. Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided, click on the Apple Partition Map radio button. Click OK. Select other options as desired (e.g., Volume Name, Install Mac OS 9 Drivers, etc.).
12. Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
13. Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted into multiple drives with Apple Partition Map scheme.
    Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
14. When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility (recommended)

Technorati Tags: seagate, external hd, onetouch4 plus, leopard, onetouch4 plus macintosh, onetouch4 plus leopard

Randal Schwartz was interviewed by Ronaldo Ferraz after FISL - there's a Portuguese version, and an English version. It covers Randal's Seaside work and advocacy.

Best Quote:

we have two commercial smalltalks (Cincom and GemStone/S) as well as two open smalltalks (Squeak and GNU Smalltalk) all supporting Seaside. This allows a nervous manager who might be hesitant at selecting a strictly "€œvolunteer-based"€ language to also have two commercial vendors to pick up support. Options are good!

The thing to remember about Seaside is this: there's no lock in. If you use Seaside in Squeak, and decide you want to get commercial support from Cincom - your whole codebase should migrate cleanly. That even applies to the database layer, so long as you use Glorp.

Technorati Tags: seaside

If this deal does go through, it will be great news for anyone who competes with Microsoft - a combined MS/Yahoo would be a crippled behemoth bleeding staff and losing projects. The Vista launch might be looked back on as a relative success after this.

The funny thing is this: EU regulators will probably try to stop the deal if it gets that far. However - if they really wanted to improve competition, they would allow it to happen. The raw chaos that would ensue the consummation would be a boon to all the other players in the industry.

I have to admit, this headline made me chuckle:

Intel Faces Atom Shortage

Thank goodness there are still plenty of Quarks :)