gtoolkit VS obsidian-releases

Your ideas sounded very much like a mixup of Common Lisp with SLIME, Smalltalk interactivity and Unison-like storage of code in a database instead of files.

I've tried all of them, I think the closest thing I've seen to what you describe, which I also find very attractive, is the GT Smalltalk environment: https://gtoolkit.com/

Have you tried that? They call this idea "moldable development" as you can "mold" your environment to your needs.

Even though I loved it, I ended up not using it much, mostly because it's a bit too heavy to keep handy for exploration all the time when needed (it takes like 1GB of RAM even when idle!)... as I already can do most of that with emacs, which is much lighter, I just stick with it.

> This power that Smalltalk systems have where the code runs in a GUI that is also the editor/debugger/etc has deeply fascinated me recently.

Have you tried emacs?

> And I'd like to actually understand a tool that I'd have to dive into that deeply, and I think I'll never have the time to truly understand all of the VM, the classes, etc.

I've recently tried to do that myself with Smalltalk via the Glamorous Toolkit[1] (a beautiful, modern Smalltalk environment based on Pharo). Because the programming environment itself comes with a Book teaching it, you can basically just read it as a normal digital book, but with the superpower that everything is editable and interactive: you can change the book itself, every code example is runnable and you can inspect the result objects right there, change it, modify the view for it... they say it's "moldable development" because you almost literally mold the environment as you write your code and learn about the platform.

> And I'd like to be able to create applications that run without shipping the entire Smalltalk VM.

That's why even though I really enjoyed SmallTalk, I can't really see it as anything more than a curiosity. I tried using it at least for my own occasional data exploration because it has good visualisation capabilities and super easy to use HTTP client/JSON parser etc., but the system is so heavy (1GB+ of RAM) that I couldn't justify keeping it open all the time like I do with emacs, on the offchance that I might need to use it for some small task.

Anyway, perhaps that's something you might be interested in.

[1] https://gtoolkit.com/

I have been building a drawing and animation system in Pharo (smalltalk) for a few months, using a really neat new UI called glamorous toolkit.

Last time I tried to "hydrate" thousands of SQL rows into objects and both Pharo and the Glamorous Toolkit froze up. Maybe that is to be expected, but I've done that a million times on the JVM without any problems.

In my opinion the idea is more than direct data manipulation. It is about how we get feedback. In drawing, the medium to draw is the same medium to read. In programming, there is often a mismatch - coding on a text file, running on somewhere else, e.g. terminal, browser, remote server. If you count surrounding activities for programming, like versioning, debugging, metering and profiling, even more system is involved. We are not even touching the myriad of SaaS offering each tackling carve out a little pie out of the programming life cycle.

Back to your question, from my naive understanding, smalltalk seems to be an all in one environment. The Glamorous Toolkit [1] seems to be that environment on steroid. I have no useful experience to share though.

https://gtoolkit.com/

Wrote a review on it on the website, copypasting:

Glamorous Toolkit[1] promotes the idea of moldable development[2].

There's a talk on it: Tudor Gîrba - Moldable development.[3]

The basic idea is to have multiple views and editors for any piece of data in your system (including code). Kind of interesting, but the toolkit looks and acts more like a fancy computational notebook type of environment, but without explicitly being a computational notebook.

The site on moldable development states its difference with literate programming:

They are similar in that they both promote the use of narratives for depicting systems. However, Literate Programming offers exactly a single narrative, and that narrative is tied to the definition of the code. Through Moldable Development we recognize that we always need multiple narratives, and that those narratives must be able to address any part of the system (not only static code).

And that's a sensible viewpoint. But I still see it as an advanced version of a literate programming, all done within an interactive environment.

The focus of Glamorous Toolkit seems to be on explaining a code base or a certain part of the system via presenting it via a custom tool.

But I am not too convinced with the top-level development model / workflow it assumes for you. I guess it's too narrowly-focused / opinionated.

It's also a custom fork of Pharo, so the question of long-term stability is even more unclear than that of Pharo itself.

I can't say I can compare it to Project Mage in any meaningful way, except it's also a live environment.

[1] https://gtoolkit.com/

Wow, that's very interesting, never heard of it before. In the first link and they've mentioned smalltalk and I remember checking out https://gtoolkit.com which I think has some of the ideas from emacs but is implemented in smalltalk. I always wondered if gtoolkit could fundamentally offer something emacs couldn't (at the principal level) but now that you've lebaled them together, I think I know the answer is no

prolly a bit outside the mainstream but -> https://gtoolkit.com/

The closest editor that follows our first principle is Obsidian editor:

The solution was already installed on both my computer and my phone: Obsidian.

> why does open source need to "win"

Open source does not need to win.

But your ability to be in control of your computer needs to be preserved. A proprietary fridge cannot control your diet, while a proprietary App Store can control what software you install on YOUR phone (unless you live in EU, hello DMA!). The tail wags the dog, so to speak. Proprietary software has also been shown to break user workflows or remove functions in an update while leaving users with no choice whatsoever.

One alternative to having open source win is to ensure software must come with a robust warranty and other assurances you expect from the things you buy. EU's CRA will make software vulnerabilities in WiFi routers covered by warranty, for example.

You can also ensure robust and interoperable data storage options. For example, https://obsidian.md/ stores all notes in Markdown, not holding the data hostage in case users will not like how future versions will work. GDPR actually has a provision for data portability (Art. 20), but it does not seem to have a requisite effect on the industry yet.

And until the above issues are solved, open source remains the best way to ensure that a software tail cannot wag your computer dog.

[2] https://obsidian.md/

So I've had my fair share of personal websites and blogs. I have built them on stacks ranging from the most basic HTML and CSS, to hosted frameworks like Wordpress and Laravel, to the more modern single page applications built in Vue and React. For a simple content blog I think you can't go wrong with a Static Site Generator though. These days I am almost exclusively writing everything in Obsidian. Which is great because its all in standard markdown format. This allows for a really neat and easy content publishing workflow.

Consider making an Obsidian[^1] plugin, or writing to Obsidian-compatible Markdown files :)

[^1]: https://obsidian.md/

Obsidian is a writing application created to allow for offline / private note taking in markdown format, in an interface that looks a lot like our regular programming IDE. It is very flexible, with a good collection of community plugins that you can use to customize Obsidian to your heart contents.

Obsidian support via our Obsidian Plugin

Thank you!

In the beginning, I used kognise'z water.css [1], so most of the smart decisions (background/text color, margins, line spacing I think) probably come from there. Since then it's been some amount of little adjustments. The font is by Jean François Porchez, called Le Monde Livre Classic [2].

I draft in Obsidian [3] and build the site with a couple python scripts and KaTeX.

[1] https://watercss.kognise.dev/

[2] https://typofonderie.com/fr/fonts/le-monde-livre-classic

[3] https://obsidian.md/