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PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

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I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

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Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

The Language I Will Kind of Learn in 2008: Smalltalk

In 2007, I took a whack at learning Haskell as my Language of the Year. It was an educational experience on more levels than I had expected. I didn't get as far with the language as I might have hoped, but I did have the essential mind-opening experience of dealing with a purely functional, "lazy" language. My approach and style in my primary day-to-day language (Python) changed in a positive way. I really like Haskell and hope to continue playing, and possibly working, with it in the future.

So it's February. I've been busy. But I like this LotY thing. For 2008 I'm going to look at Smalltalk. Here are some of the things, in no particular order, that I think are cool about Smalltalk:

I've already installed GNU Smalltalk and Squeak on my Ubuntu play machine. I know from last year not to expect any grand output, but I'm looking forward to the education nonetheless.

Saturday, February 9th, 2008
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4 comments

Some related posts: Understanding tuples vs. lists in Python • Array comprehensions in Javascript • Neat Python hack: infix operators • The whitespace brigade • 99-byte Python quicksort • Let's play a game: BASIC vs. Ruby vs. Python vs. PHP • BASIC Computer Games • A Ruby happening • CodeZoo • Python web framework mania
• Comment from Randal L. Schwartz, later that day

Yes... I think 2008 will be Smalltalk's year with Seaside being the "next" RoR, even though Seaside actually predated and influenced RoR.

• Comment from Paolo Bonzini, later that day

We'll be happy to help with GNU Smalltalk at help-smalltalk@gnu.org!

• Comment from Loren Davie, 2 days later

For me I think its going to be Erlang. I love the idea of the super-high availability and massively distributed nature of it. And there's a Python interface! (Called a "port" in Erlang-speak).

• Comment from Paul, 3 days later

What a nice trio of comments.

Randal: I'm excited to see what happens with Seaside this year, though growth on the Rails scale would astonish me.

Paulo: Thanks for the kind offer; I'm sure I'll need help!

Loren: Nice to hear from you. Erlang is very interesting to me as well, so I look forward to hearing what you think of it if you do indeed go that way.

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