Smalltalk is an interpreted language!
Well started my assignments for the OOP class. It’s a simple introductory to smalltalk programming. I have to create a derived class from another provided by the professor. When I “compiled” the file, and passed it to the smalltalk interpreter, I encountered a problem! Smalltalk did not like me using my instantiated object:
” My Main! “
| sa |
sa := SavingsAccount new initialize: 50.
sa postInterest: 0.05 .
sa inspect
!
>./gst ~/Documents/grad_school/ooProgramming722/dev/savingsAccount.st
“Scavenging… 15% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
Not so good, hunh? I am sure you smalltalk gurus already see my problem. Besides running smalltalk as a program and not installing it wherever make install puts it. Hint for all you non-programmers: interpreted languages are read from start to finish at the time the program is run.
See it yet? My SavingsAccount is derived from another class Account. (Am I using the correct smalltalk terminology?) I am passing only the savingsAccount file to the interpreter, and I am missing it’s parent. How will smalltalk know what the parent class looks like? Smalltalk was able to interpret the object in this file by just creating instances of a generic object to take place of the SavingsAccount’s super class. I guess it doesn’t like garbage collecting in this scenario. I must read the oop.h file to understand why but for now passing the parent class on the CLI does the trick.
