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  • Uncle Bob’s new fetish

    Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”) has a new fetish: Clojure. From this article, I quote something that I feel is necessary to clarify: Smalltalk was small and elegant and beautiful. It spawned the Design Patterns revolution. It spawned the Refactoring revolution. It spawned the TDD revolution. It helped to spawn the Agile revolution. Smalltalk was…

  • What Killed Smalltalk

    Mark Twain once quipped in 1897 that, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” For many years, Smalltalk has been written off as a dead language. One of the most controversial examples of this was a talk given by Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”) at RailsConf 2009. With this year’s celebration of the 50th…

  • Camp Smalltalk Supreme videos have now been published

    Smalltalk Renaissance — 50 Years of Smalltalk – YouTube Check out the playlists, too. Enjoy.

  • Going Down Memory Lane

    Going Down Memory Lane

    Today, I was reminded of the article that spearheaded my Smalltalk advocacy campaign in 2016: How learning Smalltalk can make you a better developer. The article was published in TechBeacon on July 18, 2016. It was my very first article to gain international acclaim (I had been writing dozens of articles in the previous year…

  • Announcing the Winner of the 2022 JRMPC Competition

    I am pleased to announce the winner of this year’s JRMPC competition. The judges reviewed all the submissions and came to the extraordinary decision that only Ana DuCristea of John G. Diefenbaker High School in Calgary, AB was worthy of an award. Her work was outstanding and constituted enormous dedication and enthusiasm for Smalltalk. Unfortunately, none of…

  • When Pigeons Talk: The Evolution of Programming Education

    MIT’s Scratch and Google’s Blockly are two well-known programming platforms designed to teach programming to young novices. They use a visual style of programming whereby blocks are strung together to form software. While these systems are useful and pedagogically effective, they are not the ideal way to learn object-oriented programming, the most widely used paradigm…

  • Why I Love Rust and Smalltalk

    Rust is a great language for its intended purposes and usage. Unfortunately, no language is good for everything and there are always major trade-offs. Personally, I think a great companion language for Rust is Smalltalk. Its strengths are Rust’s weaknesses, and its weaknesses are Rust’s strengths. Smalltalk is supremely simple and easy to learn and…

  • Smalltalk, big ideas and how to escape the island

    Exciting Meetup coming next week: Don’t miss it!

  • JRMPC 2022 Registration Is Now Open

    This is the high school programming competition you’ve all been waiting for. Registration for it is now open. Registration is free! There are big prizes! For more details, visit https://jrmpc2022.wordpress.com/.

  • The Reinvention of Instantiations

    Instantiations is a major Smalltalk vendor with a long and illustrious history. This year, it reinvented itself with a huge rebranding exercise: I like it very much. I love the aesthetics. This will greatly enhance Instantiations’ image (pun intended) within the programming community. In addition to the rebranding, Instantiations has been very actively developing its…