As He often does, God spoke to me very early this morning while I was in bed. Not in a dream but in a dream-like state… For the past year, I’ve been struggling to find a way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Smalltalk in 2022. I even published an article asking for suggestions but I got noContinue reading “50th Anniversary of Smalltalk”
Author Archives: smalltalkrenaissance
COVID-19 and JRMPC
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the JRMPC awards ceremony has been postponed till a later date. It was originally going to be held at Ryerson University, one of our chief sponsors, on April 18th. In the worst case that the ceremony cannot be held by the start of summer, a virtual awards ceremony will be conducted. ThisContinue reading “COVID-19 and JRMPC”
JRMPC 2020 Award Winners
I am most pleased to announce this year’s winners of The James Robertson Memorial Programming Competition. It was an exciting contest with several teams consistently finishing in a strong position over four rounds: The Battle of Waterloo from Woodbridge College in Vaughan, Ontario Bickle Blatwoon from Robert Thirsk High School in Calgary, Alberta ‘Dief’ferent from JohnContinue reading “JRMPC 2020 Award Winners”
Battlesnake: the Competition
A few years ago, I learned of a programming competition in British Columbia called Battlesnake. It had been covered in the media. Battlesnake and JRMPC share some common traits. First, they both involve creating a robotic “mind” (Battlesnake calls it an “AI snake”). Second, they both work off a grid and, at least in later rounds,Continue reading “Battlesnake: the Competition”
Round 4 Results
I am pleased to announce the #1 leading team for Round 4 in The James Robertson Memorial Programming Competition (JRMPC). Congratulations to Team Dijkstra from Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute in Guelph, Ontario. This round is special because it’s the first time that competing team strategies play out on the same board simultaneously. It’s a fightContinue reading “Round 4 Results”
Smalltalk Poll 1
JRMPC is The James Robertson Memorial Programming Competition. First Prize is a staggering $6,000. This poll is about the competition. Promo videos for the competition: T-shirt design for the competition: Here’s how the T-shirts look from one of the teams: The team-based competition involves finding the best strategy in a Pac-Man style game and implementingContinue reading “Smalltalk Poll 1”
Smalltalk: An Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon
If you’re an entrepreneur, and especially if you’re a digital entrepreneur, one of your greatest concerns is getting to market as quickly and as easily as you can. Your business is highly dependent on computers, whether that’s in the area of web applications or mobile development or machine learning or virtual reality or robotics or whatever. At theContinue reading “Smalltalk: An Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon”
The Results Are In!
Round 1 of The James Robertson Memorial Programming Competition (JRMPC) just completed. Congratulations to Team ‘The Battle of Waterloo’ from Woodbridge College in Toronto, Canada for an outstanding performance. We look forward to Rounds 2, 3, 4, and 5 (the prize-winning round). Let’s give a hand to these exceptional students and newfound Smalltalkers!
Fuzzy Thinking in Smalltalk
by Lorenzo Schiavina EDOR Metodi Quantitativi When I was a professor of Operation Research at the Faculty of Mathematics at the Catholic University of Brescia, I was lucky enough to contact Lofti Zadeh who was going to develop fuzzy logic and I was impressed by his work. Subsequently I deepened the topic by reading theContinue reading “Fuzzy Thinking in Smalltalk”
Extending the Smalltalk Syntax 4
by Leandro Caniglia President of FAST (Fundación Argentina de Smalltalk) Story 4: Hybrid Compilation Have you ever heard of the idea the creators of Smalltalk had for allowing any class to choose its compiler? To provide support for this classes respond to the #compiler message before the actual compilation is attempted. Why then, this capability hasn’t beenContinue reading “Extending the Smalltalk Syntax 4”
