# Seeking some of that old-time Smalltalk religion **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 22, 2006, 4:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887 "2006-03-22T16:59:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnlester)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 4:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887/1 "2006-03-22T16:59:36Z")
I know there are some Smalltalk folks who hang out here, so I’d like to pose perhaps a fairly ignorant question: How far away is irb from a Smalltalk development environment? Put another way, what must need to be done to get to a Smalltalk development environment? Will being able to load / save image files get me closer (have folks done this by serializing the ObjectSpace tree to disk already)? Or am I just going to have to experience it for myself to get the gestalt of Smalltalk IDEs? Thanks for any & all insight … -John > **[John Lam's Blog](https://www.iunknown.com)** > > Since 1997 ---
**Author:** ![johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnlester)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887/2 "2006-03-22T17:09:11Z")
John L. wrote: > I know there are some Smalltalk folks who hang out here, so I’d like to pose > perhaps a fairly ignorant question: > > How far away is irb from a Smalltalk development environment? > > Put another way, what must need to be done to get to a Smalltalk development > environment? Will being able to load / save image files get me closer (have > folks done this by serializing the ObjectSpace tree to disk already)? Or am > I just going to have to experience it for myself to get the gestalt of > Smalltalk IDEs? Not being a Smalltalk guy myself… I’d guess that it’s quite a long way from IRB to a modern Smalltalk IDE: IRB doesn’t have a graphical UI for example. But I’ve heard there are quite a number of decent Ruby IDE’s out there. Note also, that marshaling object graphs doesn’t help here because that doesn’t capture methods. So the tool would have to keep track of defined variables and methods and store them somehow. Kind regards ``` robert ``` ---
**Author:** ![johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnlester)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 1:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887/3 "2006-03-23T01:59:00Z")
John L. wrote: > I know there are some Smalltalk folks who hang out here, so I’d like to pose > perhaps a fairly ignorant question: > > How far away is irb from a Smalltalk development environment? > > Put another way, what must need to be done to get to a Smalltalk development > environment? Will being able to load / save image files get me closer (have > folks done this by serializing the ObjectSpace tree to disk already)? Or am > I just going to have to experience it for myself to get the gestalt of > Smalltalk IDEs? I’ve been working on a Self/Squeak type interface environment for Ruby: [![](http://www.mike-austin.com/interface-design/Ruby-Inertia.jpg) ](http://www.mike-austin.com/interface-design/Ruby-Inertia.jpg) I think Self and Squeak are pioneers in live design, but I find them a little over-complex. Ruby-Inertia is being designed from scratch using SDL, OpenGL and FreeType. I’ve written prototypes of it in C++, Io and Dylan also. So far, Ruby seems to be the easiest (I wonder why? 🙂 Nothing to release yet, it needs a little more work. [http://research.sun.com/self/](http://research.sun.com/self/) > **[Squeak/Smalltalk](https://squeak.org/)** > > Squeak is a modern, open source, full-featured implementation of the powerful Smalltalk programming language and environment. Mike ---
**Author:** ![johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnlester)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 2:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887/4 "2006-03-23T02:24:47Z")
The short answer is light years away. Go over to [http://www.object-arts.com](http://www.object-arts.com) and download the free Community Edition of Dolphin and see for yourself. It makes all other IDE’s look antiquated. ---
**Author:** ![johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnlester)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 3:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887/5 "2006-03-23T03:06:36Z")
On Mar 22, 2006, at 5:52 PM, John L. wrote: > live object graph? I guess I’m going to have to spend some time > digging into > the sources to see how the AST hangs together and whether that > would even > make any sense. ParseTree can be used with Ruby2Ruby to persist some of the AST. There are limitations though. [http://rubyforge.org/projects/parsetree/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/parsetree/) – Eric H. - removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid - [http://blog.segment7.net](http://blog.segment7.net) This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant [http://trackmap.robotcoop.com](http://trackmap.robotcoop.com) ---
**Author:** ![johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnlester)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 2:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887/6 "2006-03-23T02:52:35Z")
On 3/22/06, Robert K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Note also, that marshaling object graphs doesn’t help here because that > doesn’t capture methods. So the tool would have to keep track of > defined variables and methods and store them somehow. Whoops - that’s right. Is it possible to persist Ruby’s AST as well as the live object graph? I guess I’m going to have to spend some time digging into the sources to see how the AST hangs together and whether that would even make any sense. Thanks -John > **[John Lam's Blog](https://www.iunknown.com/)** > > Since 1997 ---
**Author:** ![johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@johnlester](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnlester)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 6:32am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-of-that-old-time-smalltalk-religion/102887/7 "2006-03-23T06:32:41Z")
I forgot about ParseTree - thanks for making it! -John > **[John Lam's Blog](https://www.iunknown.com/)** > > Since 1997