Instantiations recently attended and presented at the in-person Smalltalk community event: Camp Smalltalk Supreme. This event was held at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) from June 10th through 12th.
For those who have never attended Camp Smalltalk, it is a regularly held conference with seminars and workshops about the Smalltalk programming language. This year marked the 50th anniversary of the creation of Smalltalk at Xerox PARC in 1972, and as a result, there was a great line-up of keynote speakers including Adele Goldberg, Dan Ingalls, Kent Beck, and David Buck.
The presentations not only provided an exceptional review of where Smalltalk started, but also importantly where we're going in the future. So many interesting ideas and technologies were discussed! We had a great time seeing everyone from the community, and the whole experience really reinforced the importance of these types of events. It makes us look forward to the next one!
Instantiations gave 3 presentations at Camp Smalltalk Supreme, all of which were recorded (see below). For those interested in the other presentations, check out the Smalltalk Renaissance YouTube Channel.
Company Update & VAST 2022 Overview
Get an update on our progress over the past year, and where we are headed in the near future. Plus, learn more about the new features just released in VAST Platform 2022, including our advanced Unicode implementation, ARM processor support, OpenSSL 3.0, and asynchronous streams/zones.
Beyond Modernization: VAST’s Advanced Unicode Implementation
Unicode can be quite complex, so we set out to implement a truly ergonomic Unicode experience for Smalltalk. Through extensive virtual machine improvements and the inherent memory-safety of Rust, we created a stable implementation that is not only easy-to-use, but also highly performant and featuring full character visualization in the VAST IDE (like support for emojis)! Join us as we discuss our methodologies and why we chose to go beyond basic Unicode support, and instead design an advanced implementation that prioritizes “Unicode Correctness”.
Intro to Asynchronous Programming with VAST
Whether you’re interested in starting a new Smalltalk project or enhancing existing systems, asynchronous programming offers a great way to optimize application speed and help ensure maintainability as complexity increases. We’ll discuss the asynchronous programming approach, why it’s important, and show live demos in the VAST Platform of how to get started with futures/promises and asynchronous streams/zones. Attendees are encouraged to follow along with their own computers and ask questions. (The recording is in 2 parts.)
[1] Photos courtesy of Adriaan van Os
