Strongtalk is a

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan ...

environment with optional static typing support. Strongtalk can make some

compile time In computer science, compile time (or compile-time) describes the time window during which a computer program is compiled. The term is used as an adjective to describe concepts related to the context of program compilation, as opposed to concep ...

checks, and offer ''stronger'' type safety guarantees; this is the source of its name. It is non-commercial, though it was originally a commercial project developed by a small

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...

named ''LongView Technologies'' (trading as ''Animorphic Systems'').

History

David Griswold wanted to use Smalltalk more extensively, but then-extant implementations were insufficient for his needs. He wanted to improve the performance, add type-checking, and use native

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

(GUI) widgets. His efforts resulted in the 1993 paper he co-authored with Gilad Bracha. This version was based on adding type-checking to the ParcPlace Systems implementation of Smalltalk. However, an implementation begun from scratch could gain a better typing system. He became interested in the improvements that the team for the language

Self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...

had achieved, and envisioned the same methods used to improve Smalltalk.

Urs Hölzle Urs Hölzle () is a Swiss software engineer and technology executive. He is the senior vice president of technical infrastructure and Google Fellow at Google. As Google's eighth employee and its first VP of Engineering, he has shaped much of Goo ...

, who worked on the powerful Self compiler, spoke with Griswold about implementing the same ''type feedback'' in a Smalltalk compiler. Griswold, Hölzle,

Lars Bak Lars Ytting Bak (born 16 January 1980) is a Danish former professional road bicycle racer, who rode professionally between 2002 and 2019 for the Fakta, , , , and squads. From 2022, Bak will act as team manager for UCI Women's WorldTeam . Bac ...

, and others formed a small company (LongView Technologies, doing business as Animorphic Systems) to re-implement Strongtalk. Work began in 1994 and they completed an implementation in 1996. The firm was bought by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

in 1997, and the team got focused on

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, releasing the HotSpot virtual machine, and work on Strongtalk stalled. Sun released the 1997 re-implementation of Strongtalk as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. ...

under a ''revised''

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

, including the Strongtalk

system image In computing, a system image is a serialized copy of the entire state of a computer system stored in some non-volatile form such as a file. A system is said to be capable of using system images if it can be shut down and later restored to exactly ...

in 2002, and the

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

in 2006. Strongtalk is touted as the fastest implementation of

. Strongtalk is available for

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

(other ports are in the works) and includes a basic development environment.

References

External links

*
''Strong Smalltalk''
at ''smalltalk.org''
Strongtalk
at

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usin ...

{{Smalltalk programming language Class-based programming languages Dynamically typed programming languages Smalltalk programming language family

History

See also

References

External links