louiscyphre
Joined 10 years ago
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Recent submissions
Comment · 6 years ago
Comment · 6 years ago
> The competition isn't even really discussed, how well it did, how many participants it drew, what came out of it.
I took the article as an invitation to dig deeper into the competition (follow the links). So I did. Here's what I learned...
Thirty teams registered for the competition. They represented 18 schools from 13 cities and 3 provinces all across Canada:
- St. Michaels University School (Victoria)
- St. John’s School (Vancouver)
- John G. Diefenbaker High School (Calgary)
- Robert Thirsk High School (Calgary)
- Webber Academy (Calgary)
- Strathcona High School (Edmonton)
- Waterloo Collegiate Institute (Waterloo)
- Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute (Guelph)
- Westmount Secondary School (Hamilton)
- Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute (Toronto)
- Woodbridge College (Vaughan)
- Langstaff Secondary School (Richmond Hill)
- Henry Street High School (Whitby)
- Bayridge Secondary School (Kingston)
- A.Y. Jackson Secondary School (Ottawa)
- Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School (Ottawa)
- Nepean High School (Ottawa)
- St. Patrick’s High School (Ottawa)
Here is the list of participating teams: https://teams.jrmpc.ca/teams .
Here is the list of teams in the leader board for the final, prize-winning round: https://teams.jrmpc.ca/leaderboard .
So, here were the winners:
First Prize of $6,000 went to team ‘WCI1’ of Waterloo Collegiate Institute in Waterloo, Ontario.
- Keenan Gugeler (Captain)
- Alex Liao
- Ethan White
- Thomas Ingram
Second Prize of $4,000 went to Team Dijkstra of Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute in Guelph, Ontario.
- Andrew Dong (Captain)
- David Xiao
- Alexander Liu
- Brayden Chumbley
Third Prize of $3,000 went to team ‘Bickle Blatwoon’ of Robert Thirsk High School in Calgary, Alberta.
- Xinhua Cao (Captain)
- Hunter Chen
- Umut Emre
- Ethan Kerr
The following teams were recognized for their fine efforts in the Honour Roll. They were awarded $500 each.
- The Battle of Waterloo from Woodbridge College in Vaughan, Ontario
- Computationalism from St. Michaels University School in Victoria, BC
- Quad Coders from St. Michaels University School in Victoria, BC
Throughout the JRMPC blog (https://jrmpc.ca/blog/ ), all the competition software was made available for you to download so that you could play with it yourself. That includes all the source code!
A great article comparing JRMPC to another similar competition was published: https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/03/03/battlesnake-the-compe... . It revealed some terrific insight.
All in all, the competition appeared to be a great success. It has certainly drawn a lot of attention, which was purportedly the goal. This is the PR value that it sought.
Comment · 6 years ago
Here are some good resources: https://smalltalk.tech.blog/resources/ . It's a curated list.
Comment · 6 years ago
> What do you use the Smalltalk system for? Very few have an answer.
I have...
You use Smalltalk for back-end web development with tools like Seaside (http://seaside.st/ ) and Teapot.
You use Smalltalk for front-end web development with tools like Amber and PharoJS.
You use Smalltalk for data science with tools like PolyMath library, Roassal data visualization (https://youtu.be/R2rLr7Z1b8Y ), and Moose analytics platform (https://moosetechnology.org/ ).
You use Smalltalk for machine learning with Pharo bindings for TensorFlow and Keras.
You use Smalltalk for IoT applications with tools like PharoThings (https://github.com/pharo-iot/PharoThings ).
You use Smalltalk for robotics with tools like PhaROS (http://car.mines-douai.fr/category/pharos/ ).
You use Smalltalk for virtual reality like in this example: https://youtu.be/b4nNtN7XBi8 .
You use Smalltalk for mobile software with tools like Apache Cordova.
You use Smalltalk for desktop software with the Spec library (https://books.pharo.org/spec-tutorial/ ).
Enterprises have been using Smalltalk for decades. It's especially popular in the financial industry. It's also used in manufacturing, utilities, transportation, government, etc.
Lam Research is worth mentioning. This company is a vital link in the global supply chain. The electronic components in your smartphones, PCs, laptops, etc. started out as silicon wafers fabricated by Lam machines controlled by Smalltalk. You owe your digital existence to Smalltalk!
The U.S. joint military even used Smalltalk to write a million-line battle simulator called JWARS. It actually outperformed a similar software called STORM written in C++ by the U.S. Air Force. JWARS was decommissioned in 2010 due to budget cuts.
Did you know that Smalltalk is also used for system scripting just like Python and Perl? With GNU Smalltalk and Pharo (in command line mode), this is common practice.
There are very few programming languages that are as flexible and versatile as Smalltalk.
Comment · 6 years ago
> This article has only one real tip: create a high school programming contest for it.
Yes, but this "tip" was demonstrated by an example. The example is a Pharo-based programming competition, so it's reasonable to say a few words about Pharo. Otherwise, the article would be pretty darn brief!
Comment · 6 years ago
PHP was in the right place at the right time back in the mid-1990s. It exploited the nascent web and gained a first-starter advantage. In other words, PHP lucked out.
Most languages need some luck to make it to the top. JavaScript lucked out with the explosive growth of SPA, circa 2010. Python lucked out with the explosive growth of data science and machine learning in the past decade.
Ruby lucked out with the Rails framework.
Java and C# were heavily marketed by Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, respectively. Objective-C and Swift were heavily marketed by Apple. Dart and Go were heavily marketed by Google. Rust had Mozilla. Kotlin had JetBrains.
Comment · 6 years ago
If you do a sweeping Google search, you will find many Smalltalk posts "from the trenches" over the years. However, they've done little to elevate the language. I disagree that this is the best way to market a programming language.
Even Haskell hasn't done that well using this approach. With all these "from the trenches" posts, Haskell is still only #45 at TIOBE. It's #26 at PYPL and falling! In terms of pull requests at GitHub, Haskell is #28 and falling! See https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2019/2.
Comment · 6 years ago
How well does one need to know Smalltalk before they can promote it? I'm a Smalltalk newbie; I've only been using Smalltalk on and off for the past few years. But I absolutely love it!
So I'm telling all my friends and colleagues to give Smalltalk a try. Does that invalidate my efforts?
Comment · 6 years ago
If I'm not mistaken, he created the following blog: https://smalltalk.tech.blog/.
It contains "solid" articles from Leandro Caniglia and Lorenzo Schiavina.
It also contains an article about his recent programming competition (currently under way): https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/02/08/the-results-are-in/.
This is one heck of a competition, and it's a great promotion for Pharo!
Comment · 6 years ago
> the one productivity study which is by now decades old
This study was published within the last decade (2017): https://www.ifpug.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IYSM.-Thirt....
It contains data for languages like Ceylon (2011), Dart (2011), Elixir (2011), F# (2005), Go (2009), Haxe (2005), and Julia (2012). So, no, not decades old.
Moreover, Haskell is an old language that has only recently come into the limelight. It's considered new-ish.
The study does contain data for languages going all the way back to the 1960s. This is a Good Thing. It means we have a statistically huge sample size which only further supports its validity.
In fact, this is the largest study of its kind. Why would anybody want a small sample size that only covers a few languages from the last 20 years???
Comment · 6 years ago
The following tutorial can be finished within 15 minutes: https://amber-lang.net/learn.html. Thereafter, you will know the entire syntax of Smalltalk-80.
Is there a Python tutorial where you can learn all of Python's syntax within 15 minutes?
That was your expectation, not mine. You were led to believe one thing; I interpreted this article differently.
Sure, for some people, the title could be seen as clickbait. I didn't see it that way.
The author did present information, just not the information that you wanted. He pointed out that most language evangelization depends on technical publications and GitHub repos, and that this hasn't produced the desired outcome. That's practically axiomatic! Just look at where Clojure, Crystal, Elixir, F#, Haskell, Idris, Julia, Nim, Pony, and Ring are. They're still struggling for relevancy.
In the third paragraph, he states: "I’m a Smalltalk evangelist and Pharo is one of these languages." There's nothing dishonest here. He's presenting Pharo and the programming competition as a sample case study.
Once you dive into the linked article, you learn all you need to know about the competition.