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stz closures

Systems level programming and closures. Look, it's not really a Smalltalk if we don't have closures. But that doesn't mean we can't be more specific about how it works. using: 'core/memory' export: [ main | memory allocate: (fixed-array size: 10 of:

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stz modules and importing

We know how to export things and we know during compilation we're running in the compilation-scope-context. So how do we pull things in to that from other compilation-scope-contexts? First we should side-bar and talk about source code management. Smalltalk has always had a long history of doing its

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stz object instantiation

There's two kinds of object instantiation we care about - on the stack and on the heap. On the heap is an act of memory allocation using a memory allocator, while on the stack is a core concept in the language. Currently we have no syntax for declaring

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stz method signatures

One of the most interesting ideas from Smalltalk was 'literate programming' which has become known also as keyword selectors. Instead of a single magic command followed by a bunch of arguments you place a keyword before each part of a method argument, eg: aGraphicsContext displayLineFrom: start to: stop

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stz memory-address, reference, and array

C pointers are ... a thing. Not a good thing. But a thing. The name 'pointer' is also ... a thing. What we really have is an address in memory and we get or set things from it. We don't know how much of a thing we have

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stz multiple returns?

Multiple return values. Why not? After all we've already thrown out the idea of exceptions so may be we should be looking at other ways to handle errors. One way is to have 'in' and 'out' variables which is something we could totally do.

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stz foundational types

The name OrderedCollection is too dang long. I'm tired of writing it. So let's not. Really, what's wrong with a short name like list? And if we want something a little fancier than we could even have an ordered list. Why is ordered list

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stz code blocks

There's no doubt that some parts of the Smalltalk syntax are a little awkward. No programming language is without its quirks. This is a topic we'll likely revisit many times. If it's going to be a Smalltalk then we have to stick with the

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Systems Smalltalk

If we stripped away all the nice bits of Smalltalk and made it a systems programming language, what would it look like? No garbage collection, no green threads, no exceptions, no stack manipulation, no doesNotUnderstand:, may be not even perform:. If we strip it away what can we add back