The nice thing about a language that takes hold is that you can work with it again and again. In 30 years we have built Smalltalk systems with quite different constraints. This talk will examine a few of these, and show how tricks of the trade can be applied to enhance one aspect or another and, frequently, to make real progress.
About the speaker:
Dan Ingalls has been the principal architect of five generations of Smalltalk environments, starting with the earliest implementations at Xerox PARC. He designed the byte-coded virtual machine that made Smalltalk practical in 1976. He also invented BitBlt, and pop-up menus. He has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Scientist, and the ACM Software Systems Award.
The latest incarnation of Smalltalk-80 is called "Squeak", and is an open, highly portable implementation with features that facilitate computer-based learning and education. Dan's major contributions to the Squeak system include the original concept of a Smalltalk written in itself and made portable and efficient by a simple Smalltalk-to-C translator. He also designed Squeak's generalization of BitBlt to arbitrary color depth, with built-in scaling, rotation, and anti-aliasing.
Dan received his B.A. degree in Physics from Harvard University, and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. While working toward a PhD at Stanford, he started a software company and never returned to academia.
Dan lives and works in Truckee, California and may be contacted by email, making the obvious substitution in 'firstname.lastname@Squeakland.org'.
Instructor's note:
On October 11, the day following this colloquium,
Dan Ingalls will give a related presentation as part of The Computer
Museum History Center's computer history lecture series.
Dan's lecture -- "From
Smalltalk to Squeak" -- will be held on the Xerox PARC campus, and will
focus on the historical roots of the Smalltalk environment at
PARC. For directions and to RSVP see TCMHC 'Squeak' talk details.
Contact information: