Seven (give or take) Smalltalk Implementations

As a follow up to yesterday's post, here are two serious recommendations for anyone really interested in the mid and long term growth of language systems

The first of these is to a book I got borrowed (and really about Big- not Smalltalk): How The Hebrew Language Grew by one Edward Horowitz, a former president of the American Association of Teachers of Hebrew.

The second is a speech of one of our favourite architects of artificial language systems, Dan Ingalls. Take care, the speech is long but really worth it.

The common point on both recommendations might not be obvious on first sight. Language study without practical application (Hebrew and Smalltalk) is a highly abstract endeavour that, being under the impression of latin classes in high school, we have fiercely opposed for a long time. The meaningfulness of it though, dawned on us one day, when one of the original colleagues at tinytalk gave a very fine and subtle briefing on the merits of abstraction. And though we still are a bit confused about the finer points of the interaction between the abstract, the body and the holistic, or, as they falsely said in graduate school, theory and practice, we now know that it can us help advance to take two steps back and give time to stuff that is never applied. Indulge us on this, pleazzze!

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