PigeonTalk will be exploring the idea of graphical programming using drag and drop without translating from a text form using a compiler. This idea gives us the ability to extend the idea of programming into areas never before available. Suppose that the names we use in our programs (class names, variable names, strings to display, reserved words, etc.) aren't just Symbols or Strings but are…
One of the ideas I'm tossing around for PigeonTalk is the concept of a Realm. In a Smalltalk environment, when you're using a debugger if you keep hitting "Send" to follow the message send into the called method, you'll eventually find yourself in the "weeds" inside collections code, window frameworks, exception handling, and more. Although this may be interesting, and useful at times, it can be…
For many years, I've been teaching programming courses. In order to help people visualize how object oriented programming works, I've developed an analogy. Imagine a person sitting at a desk. The person corresponds to an object. In front of the person is a pile of instruction books. There's one book for the class and one for each of its superclasses. Also on the table is a sheet of paper where you…
Phase 1 of the development of PigeonTalk is to create a full Smalltalk development environment. Currently, I'm working by editing text files of Smalltalk code and using a REPL (Read Eval Print Loop) to run the commands to file in the changed files. This is a very difficult way to develop Smalltalk code. The REPL itself is a simple HTML / Javascript interface which establishes a WebSockets…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this blog so I thought I’d update everyone on my latest project. First, I'd like to explain my motivation. I started programming when I was 15 years old on my own hand-wired computer. Over the years, I've been able to play in many areas of computing including 2D graphics, 3D graphics (including DKBTrace and POV-Ray ), sound effects, music, neural networks,…
Simberon's new mobile game Sea Turtle Rescue has now been released for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The game is a puzzle game that challenges you to solve puzzles to hatch sea turtle eggs and guide the babies to the ocean. You can read details about the game and links to the online stores at the web site http://www.simberon.com/SeaTurtleRescue/ .
I've updated the Sea Turtle Rescue web site to include better instructions on how to play the game. Thanks to my co-op students Milchias Teare and Chris Stanley from St. Patrick's High School for the help updating the web site. I think they did a great job.
Well, the release date is drawing near. Sea Turtle Rescue will be released to the App Store and the Play Store on November 20, 2019. Sea Turtle Rescue is a puzzle game written in Smalltalk. It features 244 levels of play divided into 9 series. Your goal is to hatch the eggs (in the above level, there's an egg on the 5 tile) by making a sequence of connected tiles from the egg down to 1. Once…
Looking forward, I'll have some time available between now and the end of the year to take on other projects. If anyone is interested in contracting some work to Simberon let me know. Simberon specializes in Smalltalk software development (VisualWorks, ObjectStudio, VA Smalltalk and GemStone). Services include: Version upgrades Custom software development Tracking down difficult bugs Mobile…
I've been a bit quiet about my game recently. It's not because I'm not working on it - I am. It's that I'm changing the game around so much that I have to get my head around it. I'm in the process of transforming the game to a new theme and new title. I've hired an animator and graphics artist to do artwork for me. The new game will be "Sea Turtle Rescue". The goal of each level of the game is to…
When I tell people that I'm developing mobile games in VisualWorks Smalltalk, they often look at me quizzically and ask why. It's hard to explain the advantages of using Smalltalk when the game needs to run on a mobile device with only a serial interface connected to my own low-level debugger. I've now broken through that barrier. I can now run the code natively in a VisualWorks development…
Your challenge is to slide tiles around a hexagonal board and create numbered chains. End the chain with target tiles to advance to the next level. Make chains too early and you can get stuck. With over 200 levels from Easy to Wicked, you will find this game challenging yet satisfying. How far can you get before you meet your match? Available on the App Store and on Google Play. For more details,…
Simberon is proud to announce the release of the HexSolve Puzzle Game for iOS and Android. You can download them on the App Store and on Google Play. HexSolve challenges you to create chains of tiles on order to make special "target" tiles advance. As you swipe the screen in one of 6 directions (left, right, up-left, up-right, down-left and down-right), all of the free tiles will move as far as…
I've been announcing the Open Beta release of my game HexSolve for Android and iOS. HexSolve was written in Smalltalk and people have been asking me how it's possible to run Smalltalk on mobile devices. I thought I'd write up a little description of the technology behind it. I've wanted to be able to run Smalltalk on Android and iOS for many years. I finally decided to do something about it. I…
Smalltalk is one of the very few development environments where developers get easy access to all the source code of all the frameworks they use. This comes in very handy when there are problems you need to debug and you need to step through the framework to figure them out. It also allows you to see how the framework expects to call your code. Smalltalk also allows you to make changes to that…
I'm working with the Smalltalk Renaissance Program to run a Smalltalk coding competition to start in January 2016. The competition is open to high school students across Canada with prizes of university scholarships we're calling the "James Robertson Memorial Scholarships". The competition itself will run over 10 weeks in 5 rounds. The challenge is to write a program to play a game we devise…
Torsten Bergmann has announced Pharo Days 2015 to be held January 29 and 30, 2015 in Lille France. Here's part of his announcement: Start the year in the right spirit by joining the Pharo community for the Pharo Days 2015 on Thursday January 29 and Friday January 30 at INRIA, Lille, France. Meet your online colleagues, programmers and hackers in real life and experience how much you can pick up in…
There's a great interview in InfoQ with Alan Lovejoy - the author of Essence#. Essence# is Alan's ANSI-compliant Smalltalk running on .NET. Check it out. Thanks to Peter William Lount for the pointer.
Instantiations has released VA Smalltalk version 8.6.1. New features include real-time code analytics. enhanced refactoring support, SQLite3 support and zip/gz support plus enhancements to Linux and Seaside. Check it out: VA Smalltalk 8.6.1
Cincom has released VisualWorks 8.0 and ObjectStudio 8.6. This new version has dramatic new changes to the user interface including Text2, a new source code editor and UISkinning. The changes are very exciting. Check it out at the links below. VisualWorks ObjectStudio
Well, here's my first rendering of an OpenGL scene from Smalltalk on the Android: It's your standard plain colored triangle on a plain background - so shoot me. But this image was generated by calling OpenGL primitives from my Smalltalk VM on an Android device, so it's pretty special. I've talked about this Smalltalk before here . Here's the current status. I have all of the same bytecodes as…
Everything's booked. My wife and I are heading to Nanaimo BC on October 3, 2014 to attend Camp Smalltalk. I'll be demonstrating the mobile Smalltalk I'm developing - it will be a work in progress. I may also be involved in a "Intro to Smalltalk" presentation there. I'm heading back to Ottawa on October 6th. If you're interested in attending, you can check out this link: VanIsle CampSmalltalk
Ok, the secret is out. I'm busy developing a Smalltalk for Android and (later) iOS devices. It's a new implementation of Smalltalk from the ground up. Here's what I have and what I'm planning. I'm currently developing a pure interpreter. Later I may consider either dynamic compilation or compilation direct to native instructions. For now, however, the easiest way to start is with a pure bytecode…
Simberon will be offering three Webcast Smalltalk courses over the summer. Introduction to VisualWorks Smalltalk July 22-26, 2013 Introduction to VASmalltalk Aug 19-23, 2013 Improving Object Oriented Design Aug 13-16, 2013 You don't need to travel to attend these courses. They are all instructor-led over the Internet. All you need is a web browser. If you're interested in taking any of these…
In the previous post, I derived the frequencies for the notes in all of the scales from Gb up to F#. In many cases, the pitches were close enough to call the same note but not quite correct. So which pitch do we choose? We come up with a compromise called the "Equal Tempered Scale". We know that between C and high C we need to jump from a pitch of 1 to a pitch of 2. From counting the notes in…