Cuis is an Open Source, multiplatform Smalltalk-80 system.
Cuis is
- Small
- Clean
- Appropriable
Additionally, Cuis is:
- Open Source
- Multiplatform
Like other Smalltalk systems, Cuis is also:
- A complete development environment written in itself
- A pure, dynamic Object Oriented language
Cuis assumes very little on the underlying platform, and this lets it run out-of-the-box on Windows, MacOS, Linux, ChromeOS and WebBrowsers. Cuis shares the OpenSmalltalk Virtual Machine with Squeak, Pharo and Newspeak.
What sets Cuis apart from the other members of the Squeak family is the focus on Smalltalk-80 and an active attitude towards system complexity:
Unbound complexity growth, together with development strategies focused only in the short term, are the worst long term enemies of all software systems. 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 and size grow without control. Evolution slows down. Understanding the system becomes harder every day. Bugs are harder to fix. Codebases become huge for no clear reason. At some point, the system can't evolve anymore and becomes "legacy code".
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!
This presentation by Rich Hickey, "Simple made Easy" is also an excellent reflection on these values.
We follow a set of ideas that started with Jean Piaget's Constructivism, and were further developed in Seymour Papert's Mathland. These lead to Alan Kay's Learning Research Group's Personal Computer for Children of All Ages, Personal Dynamic Media, i.e. the Dynabook and to Smalltalk-80. To us, a Smalltalk system is a Dynabook. A place to experiment and learn, and a medium to express and register the knlowledge we acquire. We understand software development as the activity of learning and documenting knowledge, for us and others to use, and also to be run on a computer. The fact that the computer run is useful, is a consequence of the knowldege being sound and relevant. (Just making it work is not the important part!)
Cuis Smalltalk is our attempt at this challenge. Furthermore, we believe we are doing something else that no other Smalltalk, commercial or open source, does. We attempt to give the true Smalltalk-80 experience, and keep Smalltalk-80 not as legacy software historic significance, but as a live, evolving system. We feel we are the keepers of the Smalltalk-80 heritage, and enablers of the Dynabook experience.
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 reported bugs fixed. We also adopt recent enhancements from Squeak and share our work with the wider Squeak and Smalltalk community.
Cuis is the common name of a small animal that lives in Argentina's countryside. Cuis Smalltalk was originally forked from Squeak Smalltalk and many of us are also active in the Squeak community. So, picking the onomatopoeia of the voice of a mouse for the name makes sense. As the project was started in Buenos Aires, 'Cuis' (essentially 'Squeak' in Rioplatense Spanish) was the obvious choice.
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