Presentation about Cuis at Smalltalks 2019

1. Cuis Smalltalk
Past, Present and What’s next
Hernán A. Wilkinson - @hernanwilkinson
10Pines founder – Professor at UBA
agile software development & services
Juan Vuletich - @juanvuletich
LabWare

2. Cuis Spirit
Some typical problems of the software world
● A system you don't understand is a system you can't help evolve
● Accidental complexity makes it harder to understand
● Code bloat makes it impossible to understand!
● Just implementing what you need might mean not understanding the rest
We can do better!
● A system can be as easy to understand as a well written book
● Accidental complexity can be kept to a minimum
● Code bloat can be avoided if you care
● Understanding where your work fits in a larger whole allows for consistency
● The system can help you understand

3. Not just technical but also human

4. Cuis Community
➔ Students per Semester: around 120
◆ Got +10 contributions this semester, from refactorings to bug fixing
➔ Active List members: A few dozen
➔ Package Authors: Around 20, over 100 packages
➔ The rest of the Smalltalk Community:
◆ People developing VMs for Smalltalk test their work on Cuis
◆ People using other dialects share discussion, fixes and enhancements with Cuis
◆ People using tools/packages developed in Cuis
➔ The “Wise Elders”: Smalltalk creators and pioneers love Cuis!
➔ Total: We estimate around 200 people use Cuis on a regular basis

5. We want everyone to feel safe,
to feel appreciated and
have a good time with Cuis

6. Active Projects

7. New Refactorings
(Thank you Nahuel Garbezza & Fernando Gasperi & students)

8. TDD Guru
(Thank you Matias Dinota)

9. Cuis University

10. Denotative Objects

11. LiveTyping

12. CUIS CI
(Thank you Gastón Caruso, Facu Gelatti, Nico Papagna & Ludat)

13. Other Research Projects
➔Generics for LiveTyping (Ana Felisatti & Mariano De Sousa)
➔Annotate closure types (Ines Sosa)
➔LiveTyping on JIT VM (Federico Grosso)
➔Type Checking improvements (Julian Luini)
➔Cuis OO Protector - COOP (Gaston Testay-Martin Gonzalez)

14. Vector Graphics Engine
● Both for Text and Graphics
● Unprecedented quality
● 100% Smalltalk
● High Performance OpenCL version will replace BitBlt
● Currently used for TrueType glyph rasterization

15. TrueType Fonts
● Entirely portable
● Doesn't use FreeType, host OS support or FFI
● 100% Smalltalk
● High quality (higher than FreeType, ClearType or Quartz)
● High performance
● Uses the Vector Graphics Engine

16. OpenCL
● OpenCL is the open standard alternative to CUDA
● Used for high performance computing on GPU and CPU
● OpenCL code embedded in Smalltalk code
● Immediate feedback, no external compile
● Used for satellite image processing & vector graphics engine

17. Alternative Graphics Backends
● Cairo (Mariano Montone)
○ https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cairo
● OpenGL (Phil Bellalouna)
○ https://github.com/pbella/Cuis-OpenGL

18. What’s Next?

19. What’s next
� Image modularization to be able to use GitHub as real source code
repo
�Changes model improvements
�Make LiveTyping part of Cuis by default
�More Refactorings! (Simple and Complex ones)
�New VM with Boris JIT, Pocho’s PowerLand & LiveTyping
❓Compiler improvement based on LiveTyping to generate and
initialize the PIC at compile time!!
❓Image Bootstraping

20. Conclusion

21. Conclusion
✌Cuis is a Smalltalk that it is fulfilling its purpose
�It is a nice place to collaborate and learn
�Ample room for improvement and tools re-thinking
�It is an open and friendly community

23. Thanks!