In computing, Strongtalk is a

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

environment with optional

static typing In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a ''type'' (for example, integer, floating point, string) to every '' term'' (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usu ...

support. Strongtalk can make some

compile time In computer science, compile time (or compile-time) describes the time window during which a language's statements are converted into binary instructions for the processor to execute. The term is used as an adjective to describe concepts relat ...

checks, and offer ''stronger''

type safety In computer science, type safety and type soundness are the extent to which a programming language discourages or prevents type errors. Type safety is sometimes alternatively considered to be a property of facilities of a computer language; that ...

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 Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

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 A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) widgets. His efforts resulted in the 1993 paper he co-authored with

Gilad Bracha Gilad Bracha (Hebrew: גלעד ברכה) is a software engineer at F5, and formerly at Google, where he was on the Dart programming language team. He is creator of the Newspeak language, and co-author of the second and third editions of the Java ...

. 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 In philosophy, the self is an individual's own being, knowledge, and values, and the relationship between these attributes. The first-person perspective distinguishes selfhood from personal identity. Whereas "identity" is (literally) same ...

had achieved, and envisioned the same methods used to improve Smalltalk. Urs Hölzle, 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. Since retiring as a rider, Bak has acted as a directeur sportif for in ...

, 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., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

in 1997, and the team got focused on

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

, 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 Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

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 lic ...

, including the Strongtalk

system image {{Refimprove, date=December 2013 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 binary executable file. If a system has all its state written to a disk (i ...

in 2002, and the

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

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 released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

(other

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

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 High-level programming languages Object-oriented programming languages Class-based programming languages Dynamically typed programming languages Smalltalk programming language family Programming languages created in 2002 Cross-platform free software Formerly proprietary software

History

See also

References

External links