From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2007-03-16T05:58:08+09:00
Subject: Re: IDEA: Ruby "offline" CD / DVD

On 3/14/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
> I couldn't find a Smalltalk for the C-64 -- there may
> have been one, but I never managed to get my hands on it.

Probably not.  I'm not aware of any Smalltalk implementations for
8-bit machines.  Well then again maybe.  Digitalk's first product was
a text based Smalltalk called Methods which ran on MS/DOS, I'm not
sure whether or not it actually ran on an 8088 or if it required a
PC/AT.  It was called Methods because they were concerned about
trademark issues with Xerox. Their next product was Smalltalk/V, which
had graphics support.  Alan Kay had seen Methods and convinced them
that they HAD to call it Smalltalk.  (IIRC, Alan is related indirectly
by marriage to one of the Digitalk founders, but that might be my
senility kicking in).  Alan also gave them a  blurb for the back cover
of the Smalltalk/V manual "Smalltalk/V is the Smalltalk I Use -- Alan
Kay".

Although Smalltalk/V might have run on an original PC class machine, I
don't think that it did, I think that the V stood for Virtual as in
virtual memory and that they required an 80286 and handled swapping
themselves outside the OS (MS/DOS).  Then Smalltalk/V for PM came out
which definitely required a 16-bit machine as it ran on OS/2, the DOS
version got rebranded as Smalltalk/V DOS.

Since Ed is reminiscing, I hope that you'll indulge me a bit.

One of my jobs back in the late 1980s/early 1990s was as a technical
liaison between IBM and Digitalk.  I just pulled down one of my
treasured mementos from those days; a copy of the supplemental manual
for release 1.3 of Smalltalk/V PM, autographed by the entire team, and
given to me at the Digitalk Developers Conference.    Alan Kay was
there where he gave a keynote.  Among the inscriptions is "To the
least IBM-like IBMer I've ever met -- Happy OOPing - Alan Kay"


We had some conversations with the newly formed ParcPlace back in
those days about also doing Smalltalk-80 for OS/2  but they had no
interest in any platform with a word length smaller than 32-bits.

> Yes, Smalltalk does have a place in the list. It's a wonderful language,

And to an old Smalltalker there's quite a bit of evidence in Ruby that
it was a pretty big influence on Matz.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/