Io, Io? What's all this then?

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 22:07:44 +0000

I've been casting about recently for the next language I will learn. I tried Lisp in 2004 and while it gave me a healthy respect for meta programming I didn't really click with it. Then in October 2004 I fell over Ruby one time too many and decided to give it a try. It was love at 3rd sight!

Over the last year I've spent quite a lot of my free time working in Ruby and it has been very rewarding. Recently I implemented the weblog tool I am using now with Ruby and Rails. I think Ruby is great.

However if learning Ruby has taught me anything it's that the greatest power has come from new ways to think about solving problems. For example I now routinely think in terms of blocks in a way I could never have conceived of when I was a Java developer. So, lately, I've started wondering what other tricks I can learn.

It has been on my mind for a while to try Smalltalk. Much like Lisp, Smalltalk is kind of revered as a hallowed and sacred language from which many good things we now enjoy have flowed. However I've seen some talk about Io lately and especially about the advantages of prototype based OO. Today Dave Fayram showed me some Io code that was very intriguing. I think Smalltalk is going to have to wait!

I've downloaded the Io binaries for MacOSX and an Io bundle for TextMate and over the weekend I hope to find enough time to learn some of the syntax and get a feel for the prototypy goodness.

Wish me luck!

From one dabbler to another... wow!

Mon, 29 May 2006 15:46:01 +0100

I just watched the demo of Dabble DB from Avi Bryant's Smallthought Systems Inc and it's pretty impressive. It's the kind of application that I imagine could make database applications a reality for a whole new class of user that wouldn't otherwise think it was possible.

If, as I imagine it is, Dabble DB is implemented using Avi's SeaSide framework then I think it merits a good look. I've downloaded Squeak (the SmallTalk IDE Avi recommends) a couple of times but never gotten beyond dabbling. Unfortunately I don't have time to do more than think about this right now, but I'd love to find time to have a better look.

For $10/mth for 1 user & 3 applications I think Dabble DB is definitely worth taking a look at.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on smalltalk

Io, Io? What's all this then?

From one dabbler to another... wow!