Smalltalk-78 Xerox NoteTaker in-browser emulator
16 comments
·May 14, 2025smartmic
linguae
You might be interested in this paper: "Unix, Plan 9 and the Lurking Smalltalk" (https://www.humprog.org/~stephen/research/papers/kell19unix-...)
Cuis Smalltalk and related implementations are rather self-contained systems to the point they seemed walled off from the rest of the system, making it difficult to develop Smalltalk programs using external tools.
However, there's something compelling about the idea of a Smalltalk (or Lisp) OS running on bare hardware, where everything runs in a single address space. I've been thinking about this for a few years, but I haven't had time to pursue these ideas. Some ideas from the 1994 paper "Sharing and Protection in a Single-Address-Space Operating System" (https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/opal.pdf) could be applicable to add some security to a Smalltalk OS.
pjmlp
Hence why I am already happy with half filled cup, when considering the existence of platforms like ChromeOS, Android, Meadow, Micro/CircuitPython, or Inferno, that seldom gets love from Plan 9 folks.
It isn't the full thing, but apparently it is very hard to get mainstream interest in such approaches.
Naturally this is not the same as using Smalltalk, or the other three Xerox PARC siblings, only partially.
There were some efforts to run Squeak on the Raspberry PI I think, but eventually they runned out of steam.
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/making-smalltalk-on-a-raspbe...
sannysanoff
I was always amazed that the smalltalk environment looks like a complete computer control - a paradise for a programmer and a hacker, and a creator. It's surprising that it didn't take off. Probably too much openness reflects the internal openness of the smalltalk creator to the world, but the outside world, unfortunately, did not reciprocate. Especially if we pay attention to Apple's success with completely closed devices, suitable only for content consumption.
badc0ffee
Suitable only for content consumption - only if you define content narrowly as software/apps.
xkriva11
A demonstration of on-the-fly modification of GUI internals in Smalltalk-78: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEz08IlcNMg
rbanffy
I once crashed Squeak by telling it that true:=false
jll29
Goldberg (1984) Smalltalk-80: The Interactive Programming Environment http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProg...
Goldberg & Robson (1983) Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementataion http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....
xkriva11
A faster booting version (without Lively Kernel IDE): https://codefrau.github.io/Smalltalk78/
rbanffy
I expected the Note Taker to have a much smaller screen. This is pretty unbelievable for a portable back then.
pinewurst
It had a 7 inch CRT with 640x480 resolution.
aperrien
Is it possible to download this for offline use? Or to view the source code for it?
reconnecting
Very unexpected typeface for 1979 year. Thanks for sharing.
Beijinger
"If you change the JavaScript code of the VM, it will immediately affect other users of this webpage. Please use responsibly."
LOL
y3ywuwuw
[flagged]
y3ywuwuw
[flagged]
A cute and up-to-date version of Smalltalk is Cuis [1]. I enjoyed playing around with it and developing small projects, but I will never get used to using a graphical VM and UI to develop ordinary programs. That's too far from the UNIX philosophy, which I respect and follow for good reason. Nevertheless, the curious hacker in me is attracted to the freshness and unconventionalness of Smalltalk as a unique programming experience.
[1] https://cuis.st/