Where is Squeak Headed?
There are two orthogonal forces at work in the Squeak team, with which we have been able to make two kinds of progress. These have most recently been articulated in Alan Kay’s allusion to Arthur Koestler’s metaphor of progress in two planes: the incremental improvement plane (which Alan calls the “pink” plane) and the paradigm shift (or “blue”) plane. (“The Act of Creation”, Arthur Koestler, 1964, Arkana Reissue Edition, Paperback, ISBN: 0140191917) The forces in the pink plane have to do with making an ever-better Smalltalk-80 system that can serve a wide spectrum of research and academic needs, while leveraging off the large body of ST-80 documentation, existing code archives, and synergy with high-performance industrial ST-80 systems. In this plane Squeak’s high level of compatibility with the ST-80 language (and even with the MVC display architecture) is a plus, and the current forces of progress are aimed at a higher performance interpreter, with support for block closures, except
