squeak.org VS Mezzano

Also, it's not really an "operating system", nor was it implemented by the ST. It's just part of Squeak (you got the name right), the "engine" Scratch 1.x was made with (which lets you edit the code in the same window it's running in).

Just downloaded https://squeak.org/ to play around with this concept.

I wonder if there is already a modern tool/suite for Node/Python inspired by Smalltalk...

AFAIK the major SmallTalk distributions are https://squeak.org/ and https://pharo.org/. I've heard that Pharo is more complex and "practical", while Squeak is more educational and beginner-friendly. But both stick to their roots with "everything is an object or method", extreme reflection, and integrated runtime/IDE.

Your concept looks nice, it reminds me a bit of the Lisperati: https://www.hackster.io/news/the-lisperati1000-is-a-cyberdec...

So, did you consider Lisp or maybe Smalltalk? Plan 9 or Inferno might also be options.

Plan 9 comes in different variants, the "classic" one (with a Raspberry Pi port by Richard Miller) or 9front, an Inferno porting tutorial can be found at https://github.com/yshurik/inferno-rpi

Lisp and Smalltalk can run with or without Linux underneath, e.g. on the Raspberry Pi.

Bare-metal Lisp is available with interim: http://interim-os.com

Finally, bare-metal Smalltalk is available in my crosstalk system: https://github.com/michaelengel/crosstalk

Of course, Lisp and Smalltalk can also run hosted under Linux, e.g. using Squeak (https://squeak.org), Pharo (https://pharo.org) or InterLisp (https://github.com/Interlisp/medley).

Or - a crazy idea - build an emacs-only machine. That would be fun! :)

This repository contains multiple projects closely related to (hardware-accelerated) rendering in Squeak/Smalltalk.

Packages related to using OpenGL in Squeak/Smalltalk.

Author here, feel free to ask any questions you have :).

It's amazing this little project shows up again here. So far, I received a lot of very positive and friendly feedback about this little pet project of mine.

The whole project would not have been possible without the work of Rene Stange, who created the circle bare-metal library for the Raspberry Pi (https://github.com/rsta2) and Dan Banay, who created a C++ implementation of the Smalltalk-80 VM (https://github.com/dbanay/Smalltalk). I mostly hacked together some glue code...

If you want to dig deeper, the Blue Book by Adele Goldberg and David Robson (scan provided by Stephane Ducasse, thanks a lot!) is _the_ reference on both the language and the structure and implementation of the underlying bytecode VM: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....

Beware, though it's fully functional, crosstalk is still limited by constraints of the original Smalltalk 80 system - e.g. in terms of color (black and white only), possible screen resolution (2^20 pixels, the system crashes if you try to increase the resolution beyond this) and available memory (~1 MB!).

Nevertheless, I think it's a rather authentic reproduction of a more than 40 year old system and I learned (in a comment thread on a completely different topic) that one of our fellow hackernews regulars used it to teach his kid Smalltalk programming - love it! I haven't tried to optimize it significantly, so there's no JIT compiler or bitblit acceleration using the Raspberry Pi GPU.

There's a more modern bare-metal Smalltalk implementation based on Squeak (https://squeak.org) for the Raspberry Pi by Pablo Marx, though this seems to have some stability problems according to the author: https://github.com/pablomarx/RaspberrySqueak

Finally, if you are interested in alternative bare-metal language/OS environments for the Raspberry Pi, you could also give Lukas Hartmann's (of MNT Reform notebook fame) Interim OS a try: http://interim-os.com

Came here to mention Smalltalk. In things like Smalltalk-80 and Squeak, there was no build system, there are no source code files, there isn't anything but the Smalltalk Development Environment. With something like ENVY/Developer, building involved generating an exported image from the environment.

If OP wants to try it: https://squeak.org/

She missed the biggest ‚programming portal‘ of all: Squeak (Smalltalk) (https://squeak.org/)

Inspecting objects, ‚live‘ coding, a GUI that's intimately tied to its CLI - that's exactly Squeak!

The Morphic UI: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1870

Have you made or plan to make any contributions to Mezzano (https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano) or are you mainly interested in seeing how far you can take this thing on your own?

>> except building compilers and OSes

SBCL is written in Lisp, yes? Except the runtime, which is C + asm.

I've heard people wrote some OSes in the past, like Genera. Or if you prefer recent attempt, try https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano. Never tried it, though.

No need to.

Not at all. See mezzano for a notable recent example of an OS written entirely in a dynamic language.

So..

"Why do you want to make Lisp more popular? If you were sucessful, what would be different in the world, and why is that desirable to you?"

Normally at this point I'd listen to the response, and ask more questions based on that. That would wind up with a very, very deep thread, so I'll break a cardinal rule and pre-guess at some answers.

This kind of question comes up pretty frequently. In many cases, I suspect the motivation behind the question is "Wow! Here's this cool tool I've discovered. I want to make something really useful with it. I want to do it as part of a community effort; share my excitement with others, share in their excitement, and know that what I'm making is useful because others find it desirable and are excited by it." The field could be cooking, sports, old machine tools, tiny homes, or demo scene. Its the fundemental driver for most content on HN, YouTube, Instructables, and such. It is a Good Thing.

If that is your motivator, then my suggestion is to find something that bugs you and fix it. You've already decided you're only interested in code, not other aspects. You said you preferred vim, but the emacs ecosystem has a very rich set of sharp edges that need filing off, and a rich set of tools with which to attack them.

One example: even after 50 years there's no open IDE which allows you to easily globally rename a Lisp identifier. I don't know about LispWorks or other proprietary environments, but you can't in emacs or vim do a right-click on "foo" in "(defun foo ()...)" and select a command which automatically renames it in all invocations. [Queue lots of "but you can..." replies here.] I don't think vim is up to the task of doing this internally. It would be possible in emacs; but would require a huge effort with lots of help from other people. If you emerged alive from that rabbit warren you'd join the company of Certified "How Hard Could it Be?" Mad Scientists such as Dr. "I just want to draw molecules" Meister [1] and "Wouldn't an OS in Lisp be Cool" Froggey [2].

[1] https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp

[2] Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

You might want to look at Mezzano which is an operation system written in Common Lisp https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

I haven’t tried it since moving to M1/ARM, but it is cool.