Converting Smalltalk to Newspeak

One of the things that has surprised me working with Newspeak is how easy it is to convert Smaltalk code to Newspeak. We have converted most of the core libraries of Smalltalk (aka ‘The Blue Book Libraries’) into Newspeak. Most of the conversion was done by people who had never coded in Newspeak before. In some cases, they had never coded in Smalltalk before.

The syntactic differences are fairly trivial (though they will grow in time) and easily handled - either automatically by tools or by very simple transformations in a text editor. Semantically moving from Smalltalk to Newspeak is easy (see this document for a detailed discussion of the mechanics), but the opposite is harder.

The main issues one has are API differences between libraries; but this is no different than converting from one Smalltalk implementation to another.

The converted code may not be the most idiomatic Newspeak. The easiest conversion path sticks a bunch of related Smalltalk classes inside a Newspeak module class, without creating any interesting substructure. Nevertheless, the converted code is invariably better than the original. It becomes very clear what the code’s external dependencies are, what the module boundaries should be, who is responsible for initialization etc. There is no longer any static state. It’s much easier to tie libraries together (or tear them apart), test them independently and so forth. Once we start enforcing access control, it should be much clearer what the public API really is. All this without losing the flexibility and power of the original.

This is very encouraging, because it means Newspeakers can take advantage of the large body of Smalltalk code that already exists. Any useful Smalltalk library that is publicly available can be converted to Newspeak in pretty short order. It also means that Smalltalkers can take the plunge and migrate to Newspeak relatively easily.

Of course, I don’t expect all the world’s Smalltalkers to instantly convert to Newspeak. Even if they did, Newspeak would still be a niche language. For Newspeak to be a success, we need to reach out to programmers in a variety of communities. This post, however, is aimed squarely at the Smalltalk community.

There are no doubt many Smalltalk projects that are tied to a specific Smalltalk. There are also Smalltalkers who are too conservative, and don’t want to deal with any language changes.

Still, if you are (or were, in some happier time) a Smalltalker and want to move into the future rather than dwelling on the glorious past, I assert that Newspeak is for you. If you are using an open source Smalltalk, it is likely you could do better using Newspeak. Newspeak explicitly addresses Smalltalk’s weaknesses: modularity, security, interoperability. Of course, some people aren’t bothered by these weaknesses.

Tangent: Arguably, the Smalltalk community is, by natural selection, composed largely of such people; if they were bothered by Smalltalk’s deficiencies, they wouldn’t use it.

Newspeak should interest those who appreciate the power of Smalltalk but want to move forward.

Of course, you have to be an early adopter by nature. Things will evolve and change under your feet. The syntax will become less Smalltalk-ish over time. Most importantly, you’ll have to learn something new. This is good for your neurons. You may have to port some libraries you rely on. You may have to make changes so that you do not rely on libraries you wouldn’t want to port (like Morphic). However, the result will likely be a product that is easier to deploy, more visually appealing and better integrated with its surrounding environment. Your code will be much more maintainable and better structured.

I’ve written a simple guide that highlights how to go about converting Smalltalk to Newspeak. Give it a try!