Smalltalk Zero
stz
One thing that I like to explore is the nature of iteration. In many C like languages you have for. for is a very powerful tool but it is not extensible. Some languages have bent over backwards to put as much power in to for as possible so that you
stz
Lists are arrays + a memory allocator so that upon modification it can reallocate its data array if necessary. They are essential to computing but they aren't thread safe. Not even coroutine safe. But we can fix that. A safe variant that costs a teenytiny bit more during modification
stz
It's been N months since the last 'syntax so far' post so it's probably time to revisit absolutely everything. If you're reading the blog in order then this is a spoilers page. Revisit it any time you want to know how the
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
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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