Comment by edfsadfer
7 hours ago
Same VM as Squeak and Pharo so just as fast but a bit lacking in libs but this is an opportunity to contribute to open source for me.
Currently using it to build a mostly static website (with Pocketbase & lighttpd). A good experience all round.
The shared VM is a nice advantage, especially if performance isn't the main tradeoff
I haven't used these in a long while.
Is this a fork? What's Cuis' main selling point compared Squeak and Pharo?
Cuis is an environment derived from Squeak as I understand it with all the "clutter" removed. So it is really a cut-down Squeak. Just as Pharo was a cut-down Squeak originally.
For me it was easier and quicker to get something done in Cuis than in any other Smalltalk (Squeak, Pharo, VA, Dolphin).
It looks like it is a fork started quite a long time ago.
https://cuis.st/documentation/explanation/history
The history link gives details, but if you want a quick analogy:
Pharo & Cuis both forked from squeak at roughly the same time
Squeak = Debian
Pharo = Arch
Cuis = Alpine
Cuis has rigorously simplified, so its much easier to explore & understand the system - because there's less of it
Cuis's re-engineering of morphic is really quite brilliant. Everything is hardware accelerated vector graphics. EVEN THE FONTS are drawn that way. And they remain crisp even when zoomed (in or out) & rotated.
Pharo does have some cool stuff though. I'd love to see fuel (object serialization) & soil (a fully oo database) ported to cuis. And the big one - seaside
But its not an either-or situation. 99% 9f what you learn & do in one is applicable to the other. But if you're starting out, I would definitely recommend cuis (not implying that you wouldn't necessarily stick with it)
Is the rendering in Cuis really hardware-accelerated? I agree it looks great but think it's all software-rendered using the CPU.
Is the development experience compatible with modern AI-assisted workflows? Coding agents have drastically reduced the entry barrier for playing with software projects, and I can think of some fun ideas for Smalltalk things I've been curious about.