On Smalltalk

Here are some of my more popular posts. It’ll save you a little time if you don’t want to search the archives.

• Rails vs Seaside
• Screencast: How to Build a Blog in 15 Minutes with Seaside
• Terse Guide To Seaside
• A Simple File Based Wiki in Seaside
• Simple Image Based Persistence in Squeak
• Scaling Seaside Redux: Enter the Penguin
• Small Reddit, A Seaside Sample Application
• Running Seaside, Apache, and IIS on WindowsXP
• Squeak Smalltalk Image Maintenance
• Squeak Smalltalk and Databases
• My Personal Pet Peeves I See in Other People’s Code
• Screencast: How to Package Smalltalk Code with Monticello
• My Squeak Image
• Mapping Seaside Blog to PostgreSQL with Glorp
• Why Smalltalk
• A Bit On Seaside Configuration
• Languages of the Gods
• On the Smalltalk Browser
• My Journey to Linux
• A Smalltalk ActiveRecord using Magritte, Seaside, and Glorp
• Using Magritte With Seaside
• Scaling Seaside
• Objects, Classes, and Constructors, Smalltalk Style
• Lazy Initialization Smalltalk Style
• On the Smalltalk Browser
• Domain Specific Languages - Ruby, a Sign Post on the Road to Smalltalk
• Turtles All the Way Down
• Objects Should Be Composeable
• Seaside for the .Net Developer
• Ajax: How to Build Cascading Dialogs in Seaside
• Fixing Squeak’s Sesame Street Looking Windows
• Pragmatic CSS and Javascript in Seaside

Tags: Databases, Linux, Magritte, Programming, Ruby, Seaside, Smalltalk, Sql

This blog is a journal of my experiences with Smalltalk and Seaside. I’m a .Net developer, experienced with C#, and Visual Basic. I got into programming around 2000, while helping a buddy of mine with a homework assignment he’d been given using Microsoft’s Active Server Pages. I’ve been doing web development professionally ever since, but I was very much entrenched in the Microsoft world of programming.

I’ve been programming in Smalltalk as a hobby for a few years now, and finally decided to change jobs so I could program in Smalltalk professionally, .Net just can’t compete for me anymore. Since I picked up Smalltalk, I’ve also begun learning things from the other side of the tracks, the Linux world. I’m now a big fan not so much of Linux, as the Linux mindset, lot’s of little tools that can be assembled into a working solution.

I use Apache, Squeak, Linux, and Cygwin for much of my work these days, and freely mix and match whatever tools are best suited to solve a problem, be it from Microsoft, or not. I’ve become a very big fan of open source software and feel much more confident using OSS solutions than anything else these days. I’ve gained a huge sense of freedom from OSS tools that I’ve never felt using Microsoft tools. No longer am I stuck waiting for the next big thing, I’m now using it as it evolves daily.

I’ve become a big fan of the Seaside and Scriptaculous frameworks and use them daily. I plan to write about anything I find interesting in my work on this blog, which will serve both to reinforce my own experiences and as a place to document some of my knowledge for my own future needs.

– Ramon Leon

Tags: Linux, Programming, Seaside, Smalltalk