Germán Arduino

Smalltalk: Links, News and Resources

2011-12-28T07:43:00.000-03:00

Angel López published two very interesting and complete

articles with links, news and resources about our beloved

Smalltalk.

The links are:

Article 1

Article 2

Enjoy!

Pic Info:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emaringolo/187719974/sizes/m/in/photostream / License

PasswordsPro 3 released!

2011-12-23T12:53:00.000-03:00

After months of design and development of new ideas and tons of hours of testing, finally PasswordsPro 3 is ready to be downloaded!

All the current customers that want to migrate to the new version only must drop us a mail and we will send the new license for the version 3.

Several friends helped me in this process with ideas, suggestions, really thanks you very much to all them, and let me give a very very special thankful to my friend Claudio Bianchi, owner of FreeSharewareDepot by the invaluable help I received from him, with ideas and their clear vision about the shareware market. Thanks you Claudio!

PasswordsPro is a passwords and notes manager that permits to store in a single file lots of passwords, userids, notes and so, having to remember only one password that protect the whole file.

To stay tunned with the news of PasswordsPro follow us in Twitter, visit our website or visit our Facebook page and remember that you can try PasswordsPro for free for 30 days with no limitations. Download it now and enjoy!

Zinc HTTP Components

2011-11-13T20:38:00.001-03:00

From the Zinc page:

Zinc HTTP Components is an open-source Smalltalk framework to deal with the HTTP networking protocol. This is a new project (started September 1st 2010) that is currently under heavy development. Our long term goals are very ambitious: we want to reach the level of functionality, scope, architectural clarity and maturity of the Apache HTTP Components library. Our short term goal is to offer working HTTP client functionality to support fundamental features in a Smalltalk image. For the time being, Pharo is our reference platform.

Today I read a mail from the author of Zinc, Sven Van Caekenberghe in the Pharo list, about the status of the framework then I had the idea of write this small article highlighting the Zinc features and status.

Next the afore mentioned mail:

Hi,

This is a list of the most important changes to Zn since May 1st 2011:

- added brand new ZnClient to replace all other HTTP clients (who became deprecated)
this is an object to build, execute and process HTTP client requests,
it has a rich protocol to construct requests and to access responses,
it has various error handling options,
it can reuse an existing connection to a specific host:port,
it can handle sessions, cookies, redirects and authentication,
it has many options (settings) with sensible defaults.
here is the simplest example:
ZnClient new
get: 'http://zn.stfx.eu/zn/numbers.txt'
and here is an example using some features to make a better HTTP request:
ZnClient new
systemPolicy;
accept: ZnMimeType textPlain;
http;
host: 'zn.stfx.eu';
path: 'zn/numbers.txt';
contentReader: [ :entity | entity contents lines collect: [ :each | each asNumber ] ];
ifFail: [ :exception | self inform: 'I am sorry: ', exception printString ];
get
- added support so that HTTPS works out of the box if Zodiac is present.
this should work when Zodiac is loaded and the necessary plugin is present:
ZnClient new
url: 'https://www.google.com/search';
queryAt: 'q' put: 'Pharo Smalltalk';
get
- added a new subclass, ZnManagingMultiThreadedServer, that keeps track of open
worker connections so that they can be properly closed when needed.
to use this server with the Zn Seaside adaptor, you can do this:
ZnZincServerAdaptor new
port: 8080;
serverClass: ZnManagingMultiThreadedServer;
start
- refactored ZnNetworkingUtils, it is now (also) a factory for creating socket streams
- added ZnDispatcherDelegate for straight-forward dispatching to mapped urls (thx Nick Ager)
- cleanup of the cookie handling API
- fixed support for HTTP proxies (thx Alexandre Bergel for reporting)
- localhost URLs are now excluded from being proxied
- working around SocketStream>>#atEnd issues by using #peek
- implemented support for proxies that require authorization
- introduced ZnConnectionTimeout process variable
- added ManagedServers class variable to ZnServer to dispatch the system's
#startUp/#shutDown messages to all server instances that are #register-ed
- implemented client side support for If-Modified-Since and Not Modified
- changed ZnMimePart>>#fieldValueString to return an empty string instead of 'nil'
when the field is empty or absent (Thx Lukas Renggli)
- added support for dealing with certain defaults in ZnUrl
- added code to throw a ZnMissingHost exception when a bogus ZnUrl is used to connect to a HTTP host
- added ZnMimeType wildcard constants #any and #text
- added ZnHttpUnsuccessful and ZnUnexpectedContentType exceptions
- added a nice example to ZnEasy class>>#getPng: (Thx Lukas Renggli)
- added ZnUtils class>>#parseHttpDate: for use in ZnCookie>>#expiresTimeStamp
- added optional delegate #close-ing to ZnServer hierarchy
- added some Pharo 1.2 compatibility (ZnMultiThreadedServer>>#exceptionSet:)
- lots of small fixes, cleanup and improved documentation.

And don't miss the Getting Started guide!

Indeed this is a very good framework, not only by its features, but also for it technical quality and the commitment of the developer, taking care of the support and documentation.

I should reimplement XMLRPC to use Zinc. Hope to have time soon.

Pic Info:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodomut/3950770038/ / License

Are you using IdeaSpace?

2011-11-10T16:30:00.000-03:00

As a long time Dolphiner is not much time that I'm using IdeaSpace and let me comment that is a really handy and useful tool.

Basically IdeaSpace allows to group in a single window every Dolphin window that you are using in a development session, with exception of the Transcript.

Each window that is added to an IdeaSpace window have its own tab to make easy and homy to switch between one or more class browser's, view composer's, workspaces, package manager, etc.

A sample of one of my current projects, next:

Playing with Visual Works 7.8

2011-11-07T20:42:00.000-03:00

Today I downloaded Visual Works 7.8 to evaluate somethings, and I like the new projects splash, a really handy application:

Also, changed the fonts, as the next image show:

One more time, I'm impressed with the load speed of the environment.

Producir con Smalltalk

2011-10-17T18:47:00.000-03:00

Una costumbre que tengo es releer con cierta periodicidad cosas que escribí hace tiempo, justamente para verificar el efecto del paso de ese tiempo, es decir, si mantienen cierta vigencia o quedan completamente descolocadas.

Unos pequeños párrafos que escribí cuando empecé a ver las ventajas de Smalltalk, allá por el año 2000 o 2001 si mal no recuerdo son los que transcribo a continuación:

A lo largo de los años he tenido oportunidad de aprender muchos lenguajes de programación, cada uno pregonando ser quien iba a revolucionar la productividad y la manera de hacer software, la "interminable galería de luces de colores" como gusta decir Alejandro Reimondo , de Smalltalking.

Esta incesante aparición de nuevas tecnologías de desarrollo que tiran por la borda todo lo conocido y obligan a volver a invertir un montón de tiempo en aprender muchas nuevas inútiles cosas quitan el foco del productor de software de lo que debería ser su objetivo principal: Hacer evolucionar las soluciones que desarrolló para adpatarlas a los cambios en los negocios. Mueven el foco al aprendizaje de nuevas tecnologías, que ya son viejas antes que uno pueda aprender a usarlas.

Esta situación hace que el software se vuelva viejo antes de ser siquiera maduro, hace que con el paso del tiempo los productores de software estemos siempre forzados a migrar a la "nueva plataforma" casi sin pensar en nuevas funcionalidades de nuestros productos. Nunca podemos capitalizar lo que tanto trabajo nos dió desarrollar, sino que la palabra siempre presente es "migración", la cual invariablemente está asociada con un alto costo en tiempo y dinero, casi nunca recuperables.

Esta situación, conocida como "crisis del software", detalles más detalles menos, es la que se ha venido dando en los últimos años en forma alarmante, ya que ni más ni menos, atenta directamente contra el capital de los productores de software, que es el software que han producido para resolver necesidades específicas.

Lo que buscamos: Hacer evolucionar esas soluciones que hemos desarrollado con tanto esfuerzo, que se mantengan vigentes con el paso del tiempo, que no sea necesario empezar de nuevo cada año sólo para obtener lo mismo que teníamos, pero con otra presentación.

La respuesta (o al menos, la mejor respuesta que he visto) a esta situación: Smalltalk. Smalltalk es un ambiente de objetos (que no es lo mismo que decir que es un lenguaje de programación) desarrollado hace algo así como 30 años por un equipo patrocinado por Xerox.

¿Qué les parece? ¿Aún tiene vigencia lo aquí descripto?

Un artículo interesante y una lectura completamente recomendable en este mismo sentido es ¿Por qué objetos? que data del Año 2000 también. Las cosas no han cambiado mucho, ¿no?

O si! Tenemos varias nuevas opciones en Smalltalk, cada una con sus ventajas o no, depende de la evaluación y necesidades de cada uno, pero lo cierto es que ahí están y otras, como S8, prontas a llegar!

Para quienes están buscando trabajo

2011-10-07T07:55:00.002-03:00

Leyendo sobre emprendedores encontré este sitio con información sobre empleos, abarca todos los aspectos de la búsqueda laboral comenzando por el desarrollo de un Currículum Vitae efectivo, pueden obtener toda la explicación y recomendaciones. Además un extenso listado de Agencias de Trabajo (en Argentina) totalmente actualizado.

Para quienes están en la búsqueda de un empleo me pareció interesante el sitio, así como algunos de los artículos que incluye, por ejemplo:

Para los que estamos más del lado de los emprendimientos incluye algunas notas interesantes (a raíz de la cual encontré el sitio), como por ejemplo:

Características de los emprendedores exitosos

Espero les resulte de interés!

Información de la foto:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/usaghumphreys/6206340697/ / License

A new venture!

2011-09-23T16:00:00.000-03:00

We are pleased to announce that we have launched a new service for our customers and all those who have needs related to software.

In that sense we have established an affiliation agreement with RegNow (the
industry leader in providing e-commerce processing services and online credit card processing for vendors and authors of PC and Macintosh software, freeware, shareware, electronic art, shopping cart, ecommerce provider and other data).

We are starting with 2 stores: SofStore.com and ArSol.net and we have plans to offer different sort of services:

Discount coupons
Software reviews
Personalized advice to specific needs of buying products

As usual, we will try our best effort, to give our customers the more qualified service.

For any question related with our software stores, please drop us a mail to:

editor at sofstore dot com or

info at arsol dot net

Two editors working on these topics will respond asap to help you.

Notebooks Industria Nacional (Argentina)

2011-08-28T19:37:00.002-03:00

Desde siempre vi con admiración la industria de Estados Unidos en lo que hace a producción de hardware. Hace unos cuantos años, con las primeras Linux Journal que cayeron en mis manos, pude ver la gran cantidad de marcas tanto de servidores, como de equipos de escritorio y notebooks que se producen en el país del norte. Estoy hablando de compañías pequeñas, no de las grandes marcas que todos conocemos.

Con el tiempo, afortunadamente, han ido apareciendo algunas marcas en Argentina, una razón más para no depender de otros, y el objetivo de este artículo es realizar una breve reseña de las portables que podemos encontrar en nuestro país.

Comienzo la lista con Bangho, ya que fue este el primer equipo de marca nacional que tuve. Fue un equipo que usé durante unos tres años, con muy buen desempeño y ningún tipo de problemas hasta que se quemó el video. Lo compré, como es mi costumbre, sin sistema operativo, y le instalé Ubuntu (ya no recuerdo que versión) que funcionó perfectamente, con la única excepción de un problema para volver de la hibernación.

Posteriormente tuve (y continúa en uso) una notebook ARM, fabricada por la empresa SIASA la cual ha resultado realmente fantástica. Actualmente corre Ubuntu 11.04 maravillosamente rápido y sin ningún tipo de inconvenientes así como varias máquinas virtuales VMWare como Backtrack y otros linuxes dedicados al área de seguridad.

Otra marca nacional que conozco que existe, pero que aún no pude probar, es BGH, donde se destaca el modelo TS-450, un equipo equipado con un procesador i5. La marca tiene varias líneas, incluyendo hasta un equipo destinado a las condiciones de trabajo más duras, llamado Durabook.

También la firma EXO fabrica sus propias notebooks, destacándose el modelo Smart ST 97 V2, que viene equipado con un procesador i3.

Sin dudas, estas es sólo una rápida reseña de algunos equipos que tengo en mente, pero me interesa poder seguir la serie y hacer un análisis más exhaustivo de diferentes equipos notebooks y netbooks fabricados en Argentina.

Creo que es un hito muy importante producir equipos en Argentina, evitando la importación de productos muchas veces mucho más caros y no necesariamente de mejor calidad. Además, al ser montados localmente, todo lo relacionado con repuestos y reparaciones debería ser sensiblemente más rápido y económico que lo que ocurre con las marcas extranjeras.

La unica gran objeción que puedo hacer es que en casi todos los equipos los fabricantes están incluyendo el sistema operativo propietario por excelencia que se usa por estos lares (Windows) y considero que deberían dar la opción al cliente de adquirir equipos con sistema operativo Linux por ejemplo. No digo que sea con exclusividad (como existen varias marcas en USA que no se entregan con Windows, sino con Linux), pero si que sea una opción.

Información de la foto:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/linuxlibrarian/3259647031/ / License

ESUG 2011 awards

2011-08-28T11:41:00.000-03:00

Again a bunch of Argentinian developers won first and third prizes in the Innovation Technology Awards, held in the 19th International Smalltalk Conference 2011 in Edinburgh, UK.

The complete list of winners and the details of the projects here.

The complete list of presented projects here.

Congrats not only to the winners, but also to all the people that continue innovating and developing new technologies using Smalltalk.

Pharo: Smalltalk, open source, innovative, documented, what else?

2011-07-12T15:33:00.000-03:00

Smalltalk is real objects technology, not only object oriented, the word of difference may make a world of difference.

This means that everything in the environment is an object and the only way to communicate with an object is sending it messages. It's all, objects and messages.

In addition all the objects live in an environment (the currently named image) as en ecosystem that is alive all the time. That means that you can modify your objects and the modification happens while the object is alive on the image.

These modifications and messages are written in a language. The Smalltalk environment has a language, also called Smalltalk, very simple and easy to learn and understand.

The main barrier to people wanting to start with Smalltalk is the Objects paradigm, but after a time changing the mind a new world appear.

Pharo is an open source implementacion of Smalltalk and the mission stated in its web page is: Pharo's goal is to deliver a clean, innovative, free open-source Smalltalk environment. By providing a stable and small core system, excellent dev tools, and maintained releases, Pharo is an attractive platform to build and deploy mission critical Smalltalk applications.

Pharo is currently in the version 1.2.1 as stable, 1.3 is almost ready and 1.4 in development and it uses the traditional virtual machine but also the new, faster Cog virtual machine.

The VM is particular to each platform, but the image run unchanged between platforms. A developer could be developing in Mac and deploy in a Ubuntu server with no problems. Also any other combination of supported operating systems.

Pharo is ready to develop almost any type of application from desktop to web with plenty of frameworks ready to use. Check here some success stories.

How to install:

The easiest way is download the bundle and click it.

But also you can have you VM with lot of different images installed, because the installation is very straightforward, it's only matter of copy the images and sources in a directory, open it with the selected VM and it's all.

All the different downloads here.

You can use the already compiled vm or compile yourself. For a help building your own cog vm version check my blog post.

And if you need help, Pharo have several forums and this free book. What else you need to give it a try?.

Do you know paper.li?

2011-04-09T10:09:00.000-03:00

Paper.li is very useful application that is saving lot of time to me.

As says in its home page:

" Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format.

A great way to discover content that matters to you - even if you are not connected 24/7! "

And I would add, a great way of organize and group the lots of different information that a person may be interested in.

It's available in several languages and permit to build a sort of newspaper starting from:

Your Twitter account
A Twitter #tag
A Twitter @list

A Twitter custom paper
A Facebook paper

Each newspaper may be scheduled to be updated and posted (or not) in Twitter at a selected time, with a determined frequency and with an specific title.

I'm publishing several of these newspaper's starting from my Twitter lists:

The Daily Aeromodelling (About my hobby)

The Daily Startups (About startups, investors, entrepreneurs)

The Daily jQuery (News about jQuery)

The Daily OpenSource (News about the open source world)

The Daily Security (News about information security)

The Daily Smalltalk (News about my beloved Smalltalk world)

And lastly, as a colateral effect, is a way to maintain your presence on Twitter in an unattended form!

Enjoy.

¿Cómo instalar Morphic Designer en Squeak 4.2?

2011-04-06T19:22:00.000-03:00

Viendo como adaptar XMLRPC a Squeak es que bajé la última versión estable (4.2) para empezar a trabajar en el tema.

Me sorprendió la velocidad de esta versión (la uso con Cog 2378) asi que no pude evitar ponerme a repasar algunos proyectos que no había podido revisar en profundidad y que me interesan.

Asi retomé el Morphic Designer publicado hace algún tiempo por la gente del Hasso Platner Institute (Software Architecture Group) que me parece un proyecto interesantísimo y de gran utilidad.

Como, charlando con algunos colegas, vi que no están tan claros los pasos para la instalación se me ocurrió escribir un pequeño tutorial que facilite la tarea de quien necesite instalarlo (versión estable) y aquí se los comparto:

1. Actualizar la imagen de Squeak 4.2

2. En un workspace evaluar, en orden:

(Installer mc http: 'http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource/')
project: 'MetacelloRepository';
install: 'ConfigurationOfWidgets'.

ConfigurationOfWidgets load.

(Installer mc http: 'http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource/')
project: 'MetacelloRepository';
install: 'ConfigurationOfDesigner'.

ConfigurationOfDesigner load.

3. Y finalmente:

UiDesigner open.

Conexiones VPN - Un nuevo servicio para nuestros clientes

2011-03-13T12:08:00.001-03:00

Queremos informar a nuestros clientes que hemos incorporado un nuevo servicio, relacionado con el tema Seguridad, tan importante en los tiempos que corren. Se trata de conexiones VPN (Red Privada Virtual) tanto para individuos como para empresas.

Con nuestro servicio Ud recibirá un usuario/password para volver anónima su conexión a Internet. En lugar de conectarse por su proveedor habitual de Internet, le proveemos un túnel seguro a uno de nuestros servidores VPN en Holanda, desde el cual saldrá a Internet con nuestras propias direcciones IP y mediante conexiones de alta velocidad.

Esto es especialmente indicado para que su verdadera IP (la de su proveedor de servicios internet) no quede registrada en ninguno de los sitios que Ud visite y como la conexión a nuestros servidores es encriptada, tampoco correrá el riesgo que sus actividades por Internet sean "sniffeadas" (Es decir que alguien pueda "espiar" el tráfico y adueñarse de sus contraseñas u otra información privada).

Además, podrá realizar descargas de archivos/software/películas mediante conexiones de alta velocidad de acuerdo a los distintos planes con que contamos.

Algunas características del servicio son:

Red Privada Virtual (VPN)
Conexión Segura Encriptada
Accesos de alta velocidad
Internet Anónima

Una demostración de como se ve la salida a Internet antes y después de conectarse mediante nuestro servicio de VPN es la siguiente:

Antes, por nuestra conexión mediante nuestro ISP:

Luego de establecer la conexión por VPN (sobre el acceso a Internet provisto por el ISP):

Cabe aclarar que las conexiones que proveemos funcionan en sistemas operativos Linux, Mac OSX y Windows.

Consúltenos por mail ante cualquier duda o visite nuestro sitio de web hosting y servicios relacionados.

Smalltalk in the Enterprise

2010-12-08T11:14:00.001-03:00

This week we had a very interesting discussion about Pharo integration in the Enterprise on the Pharo list.

I want to save here some interesting concepts I read on such mails:

From Tudor Girba:

I recently introduced Pharo in a small-medium software company (parametrix.ch). They use it for Moose (moosetechnology.org) to analyze their systems written in various languages and to introduce an assessment approach in their day to day development process (humane-assessment.com). A number of them are now learning to program in Pharo and Moose.

Moose is a valuable platform exactly because it is built in Smalltalk. Developers understand the power of Smalltalk in the context of Moose quite quickly after they do a couple of tutorials. The result is that they end up wanting to learn Smalltalk.

In fact, I argued for quite a while that vendors should use Moose to promote Smalltalk. The cool thing about it is that it addresses directly programmers that develop in all sorts of languages (especially Java). This gives us a nice back door.

From Dale Henrichs:

The Smalltalk success stories (at the enterprise level) come from solving problems that are very difficult to solve in the first place.

Looking at some of GemStone's customers there are two common characteristics:

- large complex problems
- problems whose domain is rapidly changing

The large problems have to be broken down into pieces that are small enough for a small team of people to attack effectively and the work of these small teams has to be integrated to address the larger problem.

This plays into the strength of Smalltalk in that Smalltalk code (and developers) can thrive in an environment where the code base is inconsistent/fluid ...
For problems whose domain is rapidly changing it is a requirement that the _architecture_ of the system be able to migrate over time. As business rules change the architecture of the system has to evolve.

Again the requirement of having a malleable code base where functionality can migrate and the architecture can evolve play into the strengths of Smalltalk...

Smalltalk improves developer productivity ... pure and simple ... the reason that developing in Smalltalk is fun is that there is very little that gets in between the developer and the solution of a problem ... the debugger, inspector and all of the tools mean that a developer can focus on the problem at hand ... the dynamic nature of Smalltalk means that I can add instance variables and change interfaces without having to fight the compiler or the tools ... or lose track of what I am doing ....

With that said (here comes the rant:) ... the _enterprise_ is not necessarily interested in developer productivity...productive developers is way down the list for the enterprise ... just look at the waste (not just in software) in a typical corporation ... (end of rant) ...

Smaller companies (not at the enterprise level) _are_ interested in developer productivity, so that should be the sweet spot for Smalltalk and there is work to be done to make Smalltalk more attractive to those Smaller companies and it seems that Pharo is headed in the right direction to become more attractive ... Note that many development groups within the enterprise operate like smaller companies, it's just that a CTO of a Fortune 500 company isn't going to wholesale switch his company from using Java to using Smalltalk (at least not this year:)...

Oh and GemStone also has enterprise customers who don't necessarily advertise their Smalltalk success stories.

From Diógenes Moreira:

We must continue teaching in the universities..and why not.. The companies.. For free.... Only for introduce the technollogy in the market

We must support projects such Seaside, Reef, Glorp, SqueakDBX or Mars (and it's futures version for linux and windows). This cain of projects are the bridge from the mainstream world to smalltalk..

We must make deal's with the traditional software companies.. And don't be scare for sign a contract where the project have webservices and java, php or .net front-end. although the solution is not needed‬. (Obviously if you don't will be the architect :) )

We need make the peace with commercial people and the technology publications..

At last and over all, when any one from this group, have the chance, one chance, to have a CIO position, take it, and make the difference.

This one, please don't think as traditional CIO, think different.

From Jimmie Houchin:

I think an effective way to evangelize Pharo/Squeak/Smalltalk is to when anybody has the liberty to do so, use it in the small areas where the business has a need and no dependencies or any particular bureaucratic requirements.

Encourage coworkers to try it for personal projects, invite them to local user groups. Even if it is simply to explore something different and unknown. Find out some of their interests and where possible and reasonable demonstrate a Pharo solution for their interests.

I think the more people we can get to choose Pharo/Squeak/Smalltalk for personal interests, the more people will begin to use it for the jobs at work that they have the liberty to choose. Over time this could lead to understanding of the benefits that Pharo/Squeak/Smalltalk can bring to the enterprise environment or to the developers life in general. If they use it at home, they may also help to improve our enterprise story so that they can make a living using their tool of choice.

Pic Info:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ross/96484054/sizes/m/in/photostream/ / License

Videos of Smalltalks 2010 are online!

2010-12-06T20:16:00.000-03:00

The videos of talks in Smalltalks 2010 are online at: http://www.fast.org.ar/smalltalks2010

Enjoy!

New Prices for PasswordsPro

2010-11-22T15:20:00.000-03:00

PasswordsPro Single License

From November 22, 2010 we set up new prices for PasswordsPro:

1 License: $ 14.90
5 Licenses Pack: $ 46.25 ( $ 9,25/lic)
10 Licenses Pack: $ 77.50 ($ 7.75/lic)

Also we have FREE licenses for do-gooders (a thing we learned from Balsamiq).

Finally we have also free license by our agreement with TrialPay.

Check the PasswordsPro site!

All prices in US dollars.

Smalltalks 2010 ended

2010-11-14T10:12:00.000-03:00

A new edition of the Argentinian conference about Smalltalk ended and was really an excellent event, with a very very good organization, thanks to the hard work of FAST people, and a high level technical talks.

Lot of international guests shared their knowledgment here mixed with lot of argentinian people showing their Smalltalk work. A big oppotunity to learn from others and to share three nice days, talking with other smalltalkers in the breaks and lunchs and dinners.

Also a very friendly and relaxing environment with excellent attention of the people of UTN Concepción.

I really enjoyed a lot to be there and think that all people interested in objects technology can't miss the next conference in Argentina!

Smalltalks 2010 started

2010-11-11T23:48:00.000-03:00

Today started Smalltalks 2010 at UTN Concepción del Uruguay, Argentina.

The conference started with the welcome talks from authorities of the University and the major of the city.

Then, Hernán Wilkinson gave the opening.

We had a lot of interesting talks and also very distinguished guests sharing their knowledgment.

The first talk was from Gilad Bracha about the Newspeak language and also we had the opportunity of hear Eliot Miranda talking about Code Generation

Further, we had a complete day plenty of interesting topics as you can check on the Schedule tab of the conference site.

In such important event also I had the opportunity to give my talk about Smalltalk & MicroISV's and I'm very happy of share these sort of things with the Smalltalk community.

Thanks FAST by the hard working to organize this event in Argentina!

Smalltalk and MicroISVs

2010-11-04T12:37:00.002-03:00

This is the talk I'll be giving on Smalltalks 2010 next week.

The idea behind this talk is show the potential of Smalltalk to be used on MicroISV world (small companies, mostly of only one person, developing packaged or custom software).

Being Arduino Software itself a MicroISV, the talk will comment the own experiences, with different tools, and the advantages obtained with Smalltalk.

A quick pane for the different solutions developed from year 2003 (Year of definitive adoption of Smalltalk in Arduino Software) to show the audience the wide range of possibilities and how Smalltalk helps also on the entrepreneurial spirit.

Finally, some references to the MicroISV world (organizations, sites, forums, events) to help introduce the audience on this world.

Pic information:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dimmerswitch/3609801758/sizes/m/in/photostream/ / License

Building Cog VM on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

2010-09-03T15:37:00.002-03:00

Finally I decided to build Cog on my Ubuntu 10.04 box.

The first step is download the needed sources:

     svn co http://www.squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/branches/Cog/platforms
     svn co http://www.squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/branches/Cog/src
     svn co http://www.squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/branches/Cog/unixbuild

Then, I followed the 3d. instructions from Eliot, because I want to build the VM on a 64-bit OS.

I have an Ubuntu 64 bits without special installations, I mean, installed exactly as the ISO installs, with no special packages selected.

Then, the first step is install the following packages needed to compile in 32-bit mode on 64-bit ubuntu:

     lib32asound2-dev
     libgl1-mesa-dev
     libglu1-mesa-dev
     build-essential
     ia32-libs
     gcc-multilib
     g++-multilib

At this point I run the configuration script, but it failed with an error message for complaining about missing XShm.h. Doing a bit of googling I found that I probably need to do this:

    sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxpm-dev x11proto-xext-dev libxext-dev

Again run configure script and this time the error message was for complaining about missing X11/Intrinsic.h. Google found the solution once more time, another no istalled package:

    sudo apt-get install libxt-dev

And now, the configuration script:

      ../../platforms/unix/config/configure CC="gcc -m32" CXX="g++ -m32" CFLAGS="-g -O2 -msse2 -D_GNU_SOURCE -DNDEBUG -DITIMER_HEARTBEAT=1 -DNO_VM_PROFILE=1 -DCOGMTVM=0" LIBS=-lpthread

run ok.

Remember to run it from unixbuild/bld directory.

And finally, execute:

    make install prefix=WhereYouWantTheVmToGo

And voila, the Cog vm is built!

Pic information:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugo90/1719493630/ / CC BY 2.0

¿Qué hacemos en Arduino Software?

2010-08-28T22:25:00.001-03:00

Desde hace tiempo, tengo pendiente un post explicando todas las actividades que relizamos en Arduino Software asi que el presente artículo tiene ese fin, realizar una presentación de nuestros productos y servicios.

Nuestras áreas de trabajo son las siguientes:

Desarrollo de Software Desktop, Web y Embebido:

El objetivo es desarrollar software que permanezca lo más inmune posible a los cambios tecnológicos y que funcione en la mayor cantidad de plataformas (Linux, Windows, Macintosh,Unixes, Móviles).

Ello se logra con el uso de tecnología de objetos reales (no simplemente orientado a objetos), utilizando diferentes variedades de Smalltalk (el ambiente de objetos por excelencia).

Desarrollamos productos a medida, proyectos específicos para otras software house y también software empaquetado o para comercialización como servicio (SaaS).

Además, estamos dando los primeros pasos en software de control industrial (microprocesadores plc, etc) desde un enfoque de producción con tecnología
de objetos (Squeak, Pharo).

Algunos de nuestros productos más importantes son:

A1-Business CMS:

Es un sistema que pertenece a la categoría de los CMS o sistemas de gestión de contenidos, especialmente desarrollado para rubros de negocios específicos. La

versión actual soporta su uso como catálogo web de compañías inmobiliarias o bienes raíces.

También existe una versión para manejo de información documental escaneada.

Sitio Web A1 en Español: http://www.arsol.biz/a1
Sitio Web A1 Versión Expedientes: http://www.arsol.biz/a1/expindex.html

Passwords Pro:

Es un producto para almacenar en forma segura (encriptada) contraseñas y todo tipo de información confidencial.

Sitio Web: http://www.passwordspro.com

WebPostAutomation:

Es un producto orientado a automatizar tareas manuales y repetitivas como identificarse a un sitio web, seleccionar opciones, rellenar formularios, subir y bajar archivos, etc.

Este producto puede ahorrar muchas horas de trabajo manual repetitivo y de poco valor agregado y puede ser fácilmente extendido para automatizar cualquier tipo de tareas de este estilo (Especialmente indicado para financieras, bancos, mutuales, tarjetas de crédito, y toda empresa que necesite manejar tareas vía web intercambiando archivos y datos).

Desarrollo de Sitios Web e Implementación de Software Libre:

Desarrollamos sitios web estáticos y dinámicos con especial enfoque en la implementación y adaptación de productos open source para fines específicos (por ejemplo OS-Commerce para Comercio Electronico, Sistemas ERP, CRM, BPM, CMS, Workflow, etc).

En estos casos proveemos también el alojamiento y la administración (backups, etc) como una solución completa llave en mano.

Consultoría y Mentoring en Desarrollo de Software con Tecnología de Objetos:

Brindamos capacitación para profesionales de informática interesados en incursionar en el mundo del desarrollo con objetos utilizando diferentes variedades de Smalltalks, pero con especial foco en Pharo. Además supervisamos proyectos específicos con estas tecnologías en empresas que comienzan con la utilización de las mismas, con particular foco en el desarrollo web, utilizando Seaside.

Administración y Configuración de Alojamiento de Sitios Web y Nombres de Dominios:

Administración y configuración de alojamiento para sitios web (webhosting) en servidores ubicados en los mejores datacenters de USA y Europa. Planes Windows y Linux con paneles de control para autoadministración, Servidores Virtuales y Dedicados con especial enfoque en Sistema Operativo Linux y tecnologías open source.

Además, administración y configuración de nombres de dominios .com; .net; .org; .info; .biz; .us; .tv y .es.

Presencia Internacional.

Luego de muchos años de trabajo serio y responsable, además de una dedicación continua a la mejora tecnológica hoy tenemos el orgullo de contar con clientes en Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Costa Rica, México, USA, Ucrania, Australia, España, Suiza, República Dominicana y Bélgica.

Muchas gracias a todos quienes confían en nuestros productos y servicios.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/3533040651/ / CC BY 2.0

WebPostAutomation released.

2010-07-02T23:07:00.001-03:00

A local customer contacted me to solve a repetitive task on his business.

Such task is login on a website (of a provider of him), select some options, and upload until four different file types (The server software of the website upload the files using POST method).

The task must be made lot of times by day, in the moment that each one of the four file types is generated by an internal system.

The customer wanted a program to solve this manual and time consuming task. Then I developed a small piece of software named WebPostAutomation to make this task automatic.

My system is basically a Pharo 1.0 image with WebClient loaded with some adaptations to make upload of files using multipart/form-data through POST method.

WebPostAutomation have a configuration file with the parameters that need to know to make its job.

Also, each operation of WebPostAutomation is logged using a simple log mechanism I developed to this project (The logging engines I found on Squeaksource were so complicated to my current needs). A sample of the log file next:

Being that the customer is using Windows on his daily work, I deployed WebPostAutomation with the latest Pharo VM for Windows, tweaking somethings with the configuration of the vm file.

To inform the result of each upload I parse the HTML returned by the server and log that info.

I know is a simple solution, but also is a clean solution, far better than automate the task using Internet Browser macros (that is the first obvious option).

Using WebPostAutomation is simple and straightforward and the communication is directly with the remote web server with no other pieces of software in the middle.

I wrote this article to show another possibility of make business using our lovely Smalltalk.

Pic Information:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sepblog/3941048713/ / CC BY 2.0

ESUG will sponsor the XMLRPC project!

2010-06-26T12:42:00.001-03:00

ESUG will sponsor my project XMLRPC Support for Pharo/Squeak HTTP Clients.

Scope: XMLRPC is a spec and a set of implementations that allow software running on disparate operating systems, running in different environments to make procedure calls over the Internet. Such calls are on XML format and sent by HTTP POST method.

The proposal of this project is implement XMLRPC, as a general purpose protocol, for clients written in Pharo and Squeak make requests of servers supporting the protocol.

My plan is start from a client named Spy, currently on Squeaksource that is from 2005 and update it with the current state of the protocol XMLRPC and Pharo/Squeak tools (XML Parser, HTTP Clients, Installers, etc). I already added ByteString support.

Also I plan develop a set of examples to use XMLRPC against the best know sites that support the protocol on its servers, as for example Flickr, Youtube, etc.

Motivation: The main motivation of this project is develop a new interface needed to people using Pharo/Squeak can interact with servers supporting XMLRPC.

Of course, the result of this project, will be released with the MIT license.

And the very good new to me is that ESUG selected this project on their "Support your project" program, so they will be helping me financially. Thanks you very much ESUG!

The page to documentation and news about this project is this: XMLRPC Project.

Pharo/Squeak Tips - Counting lines of code

2010-04-07T17:16:00.001-03:00

I will try to publish here some tips I found useful and that may be of help to others. Of course, some of them, will be very basic, but still may be useful for newbies.

Said that, a thing that I like to know is the approximate lines of code of my projects, the lines of code I write in a period of time, etc.

To know that you can use the following code:

Being, in this case, 'G1' the two letters that identify all the classes of the project I want to measure.

The output looks like:

Ok, now you can measure how many lines of Smalltalk code you write at day! :)