Cuis
Smalltalk
"Yay, Juan. You GO, guy! ...a great example of malleable software (and a clever mind) at work."
Dan Ingalls
"I like it... It's nice and clean and simple and pretty. Nice stuff!"
Alan Kay
"I think you have a very elegant design aesthetic."
John Maloney
Cuis is: - Simple - Small - Clean Like Squeak, Pharo and other Squeak variants, Cuis is also: - Open Source - Multiplatform Like other Smalltalk-80 environments (including Squeak, Pharo and others), Cuis is also: - A complete development environment written in itself - A pure Object Oriented language
Cuis is a free Smalltalk-80 environment originally derived from Squeak (www.squeak.org) with a specific set of goals: being simple and powerful. It
is also portable to any platform, fast and efficient. This means it is a
great tool for running on any hardware, ranging from supercomputers to tablets and smart phones like a CEO's business phone, and everything in between, including regular PCs. Cuis is different from other Squeak variants in that it takes an active attitude towards system complexity. As
systems grow older, they usually become more complex. New features are
added as layers on top of whatever is below, sometimes without really
understanding it, and almost always without modifying it. Complexity grows without control. At some point, the
system can't evolve anymore and becomes "legacy code". The only
way to avoid this is by understanding the complete system, and
reengineering the whole system all the time. Keeping it simple and
consistent. This is important. Complexity puts a limit to the level of understanding of the system a
person might reach, and therefore limits the things that can be done with it.
Dan Ingalls says all this in "Design Principles Behind Smalltalk". Even if you have already done so, please go and read it again! You can see the Cuis and Morphic 3 talk at the Smalltalks conference in Buenos Aires here. Cuis is continuously evolving towards simplicity. Each release is better (i.e. simpler)
than the previous one. At the same time, features are enhanced, and any
bugs fixed. Cuis includes recent enhancements from Squeak, but only
those that meet Cuis objectives: stuff whose complexity outweighs its
utility is not included.
Nice comments about Cuis:In addition to those quotes from my big heros at the top, these are from other prominent members of the Smalltalk community:
"...Cuis is a really nice image. It has a clean, crisp feel and is a pleasure to use."
David T. Lewis
"It's one of the smallest, definitely the fastest, and probably the best structured (Squeak) kernel that has been built."
Andreas Raab
"If
you would like to see Morphic done beautifully, ...check out Cuis. ...I
simply cannot rave enough about how wonderful an experience it's been
to work with."
Casey Ransberger
Some of the main ideas and objectives for
Cuis are:
-
Close to the ideas in Smalltalk-80 and
"Design Principles Behind Smalltalk".
-
Include only kernel functionality.
-
Included stuff should be in very good
shape.
-
Include a greatly simplified version of
Morphic as the main UI.
-
Easy to fix and extend. -
Reasonably stable. Smalltalk kernel should not
change much.
What is the audience? Cuis should be the
Smalltalk of choice to:
-
Smalltalkers who want a simpler system they can really master.
-
Teachers and students learning Smalltalk. -
Developers working for devices with
little memory or CPU power.
-
People wanting to experiment with new
directions in language design, UI frameworks, etc.
-
People wanting a reasonable kernel on
which to build optional packages.
Compatibility
Back compatibility goes against progress. We choose
progress. Back compatibility requires extra complexity,
of the non-essential kind. We choose simplicity. This means that there
are no guarantees of compatibility between Cuis and anything else,
including the various releases and derivatives of Squeak, or even other
releases of Cuis itself. However,
Cuis is compatible to a large degree with Squeak. The only area where
this might be an issue is Morphic, as it is what has changed most. WRT
to compatibility between Cuis versions, if
you do a significant amount of work on some Cuis release, and later you
want to update, you can use the separate changesets provided for every
Cuis release. You need to check carefully each one as you load them,
and learn how it affects your own code. In that way you are in full
control, and you can skip some updates if you believe that's best.
Community
We
want to share fixes, enhancements, packages, and discussion with Squeak
and other Squeak distributions. We are part of the Squeak community. We
believe that the Squeak community is the natural place for people using
the various Squeak distributions and derivatives.
SponsorsThese organizations are currently sponsoring Cuis:
Past sponsors:
Thanks, Folks!
FundingCuis is free software, done
mostly by volunteer effort. Finantial support is scarce. You can help
up keep developing it with your donation.
License
Cuis
is distributed subject to the MIT License, as in
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php . Any contribution
submitted for incorporation into or for distribution with Cuis shall be
presumed subject to the same license.
Portions of Cuis are:
Copyright (c) Xerox Corp. 1981, 1982
Copyright (c) Apple Computer, Inc. 1985-1996
Copyright (c) Contributors to Squeak and Cuis projects. 1997-2011
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