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From: John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: TeX and Pascal [was Re: The joy of FORTRAN]
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 15:00:10 -0700
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On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 21:27:34 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> However, I had a great deal of trouble finding any kind of
> description of its actual syntax. I think the original Smalltalk
> systems were heavily oriented towards entering pieces of code
> directly into the GUI environment, with no notion of code contained
> in actual text files.

Very much so (and the dependence on the GUI is one of the things -
along with the fact that they didn't even *start* coming up with a
viable way to separate application programs from the environment as a
whole 'til years later - which really limited ST's acceptance in the
broader world of general-purpose programming languages.)

It's also fairly light on actual syntax (not, like, Forth-caliber, but
beyond a few basic rules and constructs very much of "the language" is
really just the built-in class library) and slightly weird in what it
does have; it's the only language I know of where infix notation is
used, but standard conventions for operator precedence aren't followed,
because that would be inconsistent with the way it specifies method
arguments (!!!)

That said, GNU Smalltalk did a very reasonable job of adapting it to a
more conventional source-file oriented model. Now if only anyone were
still *maintaining* it... :/