(Part 2 of 2)
Christian Haider guides us in a tour of the Amber dialect of Smalltalk and its Silk web framework.
In his own words...
Amber ( amber-lang.net/ ), created by Nicolas Petton, is a Smalltalk implemented in JavaScript running in a web browser. Silk ( smalltalkrenaissance.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/silk-is-just-too-flexible/ ), written by the Amber maintainer Herby Vojčík, is a web framework in Amber.
I was looking for a good solution for the web for a long time. At the last ESUG, I was bugging everybody about a Smalltalk in the browser, because I decided to redo the frontend of my current project in Smalltalk instead of JavaScript. There were some developments, but only Amber was available. So I tried it for real on a little side project (sources) to see if this route is viable - spoiler: it is!
Silk, the web framework, caught my attention and I fell in love with it. Silk is very simple, straight forward and powerful, just the properties I love Smalltalk for. A Silk is basically a facade for a DOM node in the browser allowing the programmer to build up and manipulate the DOM in a direct way. Silk is so easy and intuitive that it never stood in the way and just worked. So, I could just concentrate on the complexities of the web (and the app).
In this presentation I will walk you through the setup, show you the Amber tools and explore what you can do with Silk. I will try to justify my enthusiasm and appreciation for Silk :-).
About me: My name is Christian Haider ( christianhaider.de/ ) and I use Smalltalk since the mid-90s. Fortunately, I earn my living with Smalltalk and use it on a daily bases (mostly VisualWorks). I like programming UIs and graphics. My largest open source contribution is a PDF library, the most significant one is Values.
Recorded 24 February 2021.
The UK Smalltalk User Group is a group or professionals and hobbists who share an interest in the Smalltalk programming languages and related technologies. You can find us at uksmalltalk.org/ and twitter.com/uksmalltalk
