Smalltalk Zero
stz
Let's explore some alternatives to | used to separate signature from type. w scroll-by: d | w: &widget, d: (vec2 of: float) -> ø [...] w scroll-by: d • w: &widget, d: (vec2 of: float) -> ø [...] w scroll-by: d · w: &widget, d: (vec2 of: float) -&
stz
I've been skirting around a problem I introduced early on because I'm not sure what the best answer is. The naming of types. I have noticed that in a lot of new indie languages they do things like declare primitives types all lower case: int8, uint,
stz
Now that methods and blocks both use the same syntax for describing the arguments, it dawned on me it's trivial to add in default parameters. my-block := [ a: int = 1, b: int = 2 -> r: int = 1000 | a > 0 then: [ r <- a + b ] ] my-block evaluate:
stz
I'm sure there'll be plenty of people who hate the very idea of exploring this. But what if we took a page out of Python and made whitespace matter? There will numerous problems with this but let's at least give it a try. a
stz
One of the guiding features of stz is compile time scripting to help produce the runtime. That has meant allowing code at the top level of a file. That has also meant that the syntax for declaring a method needed to work anywhere, as regular syntax. But what if we
stz
As I'm making an experimental parser for stz I came across something interesting that I'd overlooked. It all stems from the type information in a method or a block (or a signature): [ a foo: b | uint, uint -> uint | ... ] It's the uint, uint
stz
This is the kind of decision that can upset an ecosystem. Anyone who has owned and programmed on a mac for a while knows that we can write ≤ ≥ and ≠ super easily. It makes it oh so tempting to use these unicode symbols in the language because they are the correct
stz
I really like prefix symbols in a programming language. Being able to write !some-boolean-test to do a 'not' is so deeply ingrained in to me and I don't want to change it. In Smalltalk we send not to the object, eg: some-boolean-test not. It is a
stz
I don't like #scope: private. One of the main reasons I don't like it is private and package have 7 letters and public only has 6. Also it's just plain ugly. I miss the days (a week or so ago) when I could just
stz
While driving eight hours I had some time for focused thinking. Since I'm deep in writing a parser for the language I was contemplating some of the stickier corners of the syntax. Last time I talked about specialisation I made an error. I came up with this syntax:
stz
One of the most painful things about writing this kind of compiler - one in which the compiler itself runs an interpreter and one where I don't want to implement the parser multiple times - is that the compiler needs to be able to create the same structures
stz
One thing that is always awkward with traditional Smalltalk syntax is making object trees. I'd like to know if stz has improved on that with its new syntactical capabilities. Let's try and build a HTML page using {} and then again using interpolated strings. page-title = 'Hello