Useful Internet Links

Help - Basics - Useful Internet Links

Previous - Basics - Next

There is a LOT of material about Squeak and about Smalltalk on the internet but much of it relates to earlier Squeaks and old Smalltalks of different kinds. Here is a list of useful internet links taken from material on my website.

The links I give are sorted in

1. Squeak links
2. Smalltalk links
3. Open source links
4. Other links

You can copy these links into a standard webbrowser and see whether they still work. (Most did in early 2004.)

1. Squeak links:

The present image concerns Squeak, so the Squeak links should be there. (All links are both clickable and explicitly given. There is of course no guarantee that all will always work in internetland).

1.1. The website of the Squeak organization (http://www.squeak.org/index.html)

Here you find all the basics about Squeak including downloads for all kinds of OSs

1.2. The website of Squeakland ( http://Squeakland.org/)

The website of Squeakland. This is a site dedicated to getting Squeak used in education.

1.3. the website of a university where Squeak is taught (http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/squeakbook/35)

This is the website of Georgia Tech and used to contain the pdf-files of one of the most recent book about Squeak all of which files are quite informative.

1.4. Bob's Superswiki (http://209.143.91.36/super)

A swiki is an editable website run by Squeak. Bob's Superswiki is one and is maintained by Bob Arning. You can download some 400 projects made in Squeak but should be aware that quite a few of these have not much content. Some are quite interesting.

1.5. the website in Argentinia of the mathmorphs group (http://mate.dm.uba.ar/~caniglia/mathMorphs.html)

This was made between 1998 and 2000 by people working or studying at Argentinian universities. It is all quite interesting for people concerned with mathematics but relates to earlier Squeaks. Hopefully, the material on this website will be updated soon.

1.6. Recent Changes on the Swiki (http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/recent)

Georgia Tech's website with recent material on Squeak. The link starts you in 'Recent changes' of a Swiki. There is much more material on the Swiki, but it is of many different qualities and may be several years old.

2. Smalltalk links:

Smalltalk links: Squeak is a successor of Smalltalk and includes Smalltalk 80. Most of the code of Squeak is straight Smalltalk, and there are more text about learning to program in Smalltalk than in Squeak. Also, to learn Squeak it helps to learn Smalltalk and have at least a peep at some Smalltalk-implementation.

2.1. The website of Visual Works (http://www.cincom.com/)

Visual Works is the main commercial development of Smalltalk 80. It also has non-commercial downloadable versions (but the download is pretty large). And it has a large website with a considerable amount of material. If you like Smalltalk it is wise to invest some time in Visual Works, since it is optimized in ways Squeak is not.

There is a download from the VisualWorks pages of a minimal version of VisualWorks NonCommercial 7.2 of ca. 42 MB, which will take you some 2 1/2 hours over a 56 Kb modem, but is well worth it, for it is quite instructive, very well done, and the fastest and most evolved standard Smalltalk there is. It is stronger and faster than Squeak as far as standard Smalltalk and processing is concerned and far slicker, but it lacks Morphic and you won't get the code of the VM for free.

The best way to learn Squeak is to learn both Squeak and Smalltalk, and VWNC 7.2 is a fine way of learning Smalltalk in a fine environment. Also, it is quite possible to run both simultaneously, at least on my 256 MB memory Windows computer. (Initially, if your totally new to both, this may be a bit overwhelming, but you will probably learn most and in the fastest way by doing so, if your computer is up to it.)

2.2. Free books on the website of prof.dr. Stéphane Ducasse at Berne University, Switzerland. (http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/WebPages/FreeBooks.html)

Stéphane Ducasse teaches Computing at the university of Berne and prepared pdf-versions of Out of Print Smalltalk books. If you are at all interested in learning to program Smalltalk or Squeak this is the place to visit and to do a lot of downloading, for at present there are quite a few books available from which you can learn Smalltalk, and such books are hard to find elsewhere. What's more: They are completely free and only take time to download.

There is currently a wide choice. Personally, I like "The Art and Science of Smalltalk" by Simon Lewis and "Inside Smalltalk" by Wilf Lalonde and John Pugh best, but there is plenty of choice.

If you are at all serious about learning Squeak and Smalltalk, pick at least one or two from Stéphane Ducasse's website and start reading these in Adobe (freely available on many places on the web) while you have Squeak or Smalltalk running.

2.3. Dwight Hughes' website with classic papers of Smalltalk and Squeak (http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/)

The part in the address links directly to Dan Ingall's excellent article on Smalltalk of 1982, which anybody interested in Smalltalk should read. On Hughes's website there is more material relating to Squeak and Smalltalk. (NB: In a Squeak workspace the underscore may get automatically converted to _, but if you copy the link and put in a standard webbrowser it will be correct i.e. with underscores.)

2.4. Cetus links to Smalltalk (http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_smalltalk.html)

Here you find a gathering of many links relating to Smalltalk.

2.5. Andrew Black's "Everything about Squeak and Smalltalk" (http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~black/ecoop2001/T10everything.pdf)

Black teaches Smalltalk and knows Squeak and compiled a pdf-reference using his own earlier work and earlier work of Andrew Greenberg.

2.6. ESUG-website = European Smalltalk User Group (http://www.esug.org/)

Here you find links relating to Smalltalk worldwide and Europe specifically.

2.7. Alan Kay's and Adele Goldberg's 1976 manual for Smalltalk 72 (http://www.spies.com/~aek/pdf/xerox/alto/Smalltalk72_Manual.pdf)

This is a pdf file of the original manual of 1976 by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg for Smalltalk 72. It is a download of 5.8 MB and is a neat file that also shows the curling of the original typed paper copy it reproduces.

And it seems much of this Smalltalk 72 still can run inside Squeak, and it is interesting to see how much material has been copied (more or less) again and again in the Smalltalk documentation.

Thus, "joe the box" that last appeared in Mark Guzdial's 2001 book on Squeak to my knowledge first appeared in this Smalltalk 72 manual.

Two reasons why I found this interesting are that this manual apparently started the animistic style of talking about Smalltalk (which I find generally deplorable, but can be defended as useful in case one is introducing very naive "children of all ages" to Smalltalk), and that the manual shows how much continuity there is from Smalltalk 1972 to Squeak 2002.

And I find this manual much better than "Smalltalk 80" (the book by Goldberg and Robinson), for it has a higher code : text ratio, and the English, if at places too animistic for my tastes, is better. By my lights it certainly is a much better introduction to programming than is "Smalltalk 80". This manual is definitely recommended for anyone interested in Smalltalk, if only to see how much has changed and how much has remained the same.

What has changed: In 1976 there was a stronger use of icons such as for turtles, for return and assign (as in Squeak), for recognising text and more; Smalltalk contained an explicit implication, and for/while/repeat loops; the grammar was less elegant; and there were few or none of the current tools like browsers.

What has remained the same: It is quite recognisably Smalltalk (in diapers); the windowing approach that since has taken over the world by way of Apple and Windows was already in place in 1976; and some of the examples in this text have been repeated in adapted formats in most books introducing Smalltalk.

And I might have read it without noticing it, but the words "polymorphism", "encapsulation" and "inheritance" do not seem to occur in this text.

Finally, it is nice to see the manual that was behind the stuff that so much impressed Steve Jobs and much influenced the GUIs that made Apple and Windows famous and it is interesting to see both how much was already in place in 1976 and how much has since been added.

2.8. Alan Kay's history of Smalltalk of 1992 (http://www.metaobject.com/papers/SmallHistory.pdf)

This was written by Alan Kay in he the early nineties. It gives a lot of background and insight into the people and processes that produced Smalltalk and it is well-written.

It's almost 4 MB and the only problem is that in Adobe Acrobat 5.0 I had to flip pages and take some care with scrolling to read it through in the right order

3. Open source links:

Open source links: Squeak is open source and open source is an important idea.

My own point of view about computers is that they are fundamental tools of civilization and that they need to be freely accessible to all and run open source code i.e. programs of which the users get the source so that they can see and understand what the computer can and cannot do with the code it runs. With hidden source no user really knows whether the programs running on a computer are not secretly doing things behind the user's back and no user really knows what makes the computer run without the source code.

Personally, I believe code should be seen like mathematics and natural language: It is everybodies' concern; it is everbodies' interest and it is the creation of the brightest minds. Computer code should in general be open source, even if it is sold commercially.

The position closes to my own - in general terms - is probably given here:

3.1. GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) - (http://www.gnu.org/)

Another position - related but not the same - is given here:

3.2. The Open Source Foundation (http://www.opensource.org/)

I give just the above links at present. There you find many links and articles there explaining the idea and its ramifications. (I don't personally agree with all they claim or believe in all they fondly hope, but I do believe open source is of fundamental importance for the good development of computing, science and art.)

4. Other links:

This includes some links to matters related to Squeak.

4.1. The Open Croquet Organization (http://www.opencroquet.org/about.html)

This is an open source project that builds on Squeak. It is pretty new and pretty radical, and seems to aim at doing what Java aims to do but in a better way and a 3D-model. It is a recent project by Alan Kay, Andreas Raab and some others. At present there is a somewhat sketchy pdf file and a 90 MB download of a very early version of Croquet (as it is named at present). This is a pre-release, for the first official release of Croquet (or whatever it will be called) is planned for the summer of 2003 (and so didn't materialize then, at least not spectacularly).

4.2. Maarten Maartensz. Homepage. (http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/)
Maarten Maartensz. Homepage.

MM is the maker of DocumentedSqueak a.k.a. as Squeak Help. He has a large website with a considerable amount about Squeak, and other stuff relating to philosophy, logic and M.E., the last being the disease he has since 25 years. He is a logical philosopher with degrees in psychology and philosophy, who works mainly in matters relating to philosophy, logic and programming.

Previous - Basics - Next