📖Glamorous Toolkit Live #1: Moldable development & a tour

October 1, 2021

GT is written in Pharo (Smalltalk)
GT started as an object inspector and code editing tool was the very last thing they implemented (30:00)
29:00 for moldable development to be economically feasible, the cost of the custom tool must be very-very small
- average view method in GT is ~11 lines long
34:00 software design issue vs tool issue → Design issue vs tool issue
- e.g., big method vs small method. Small methods make you keep more context in the head (what other functions are doing) but a development tool can show other methods inline, so you don’t have to this issue
36:45 re: language workbenches
44:00 GT has built their own graphical stack
- skia
49:00 an example of pulling an html blog post and GT can execute smalltalk embedded in the page (by user command). the result is inserted in the page and is inspectable
51:00 Fleenk is self-funded by consulting
- legacy systems projects
- startups (aggressive prototyping)
56:00 design decisions
- focusing on reading aspect of programming
- treating environment as a language
- very expressive graphical stack
1:09:00 (use parsers to build AST for existing languages)
1:09:00 parsers debugger / simulator
1:10:00 “smalltalk is not a language but implementation of a language”
1:17:50 starting with a very concrete problem, not a generic one

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