PigeonTalk

As many of you know, I wrote my own Smalltalk VM to run the Sea Turtle 
Rescue game on Android and iOS.  Since then, I've revamped the VM, 
changed the bytecode set to my own bytecodes, and written my own 
compiler for it.  I now have a stand-alone Smalltalk which I'm calling 
PigeonTalk.

The next step is to build an IDE for it.  Development is currently quite 
difficult requiring me to edit the Smalltalk source in files and then to 
file them in.  The IDE I've started would use a web browser running an 
HTML canvas with code in Javascript to send mouse, keyboard and touch 
events to PigeonTalk over a WebSockets connection and for PigeonTalk to 
send back drawing commands in JSON format for Javascript to render.

My goal is to release it as a free open-source product for kids and 
adults to use to explore programming.  I'll be developing frameworks to 
allow people to easily play with sound, music, graphics (2D and 3D), 
neural networks and more.

If you'd like to learn more about it or to help fund the project, you 
can visit the Kickstarter on the project:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pigeontalk/pigeontalk-a-programming-environment-to-explore-computing__;!!DZ3fjg!vvjdP2_2Mn5i9xY5FbddJRPmtYEOwaY_MycVTv_4EUVsAqTxwYUOvWSXjY90dPMh$ 

I'm also planning to use this environment to explore where we can go 
with IDE's.  You can see some of my ideas in the Kickstarter video.  You 
can also check out the Medium article I wrote:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://medium.com/@david_76418/6-ways-programming-needs-to-evolve-372d4741bc45__;!!DZ3fjg!vvjdP2_2Mn5i9xY5FbddJRPmtYEOwaY_MycVTv_4EUVsAqTxwYUOvWSXjSEPwRuy$ 

If you like either of these links, please share.  I'll also be talking 
about this project at Camp Smalltalk Supreme in Toronto this June.

To pre-emptively answer a few questions:

     - Why don't you just use another Smalltalk?
         - I'm planning to move past Smalltalk into new areas and I need 
better control over the compiler and VM

     - What's wrong with Scratch?
         - I want a system where all of the code is accessible in the 
same format.  Scratch is great for teaching kids to program, but the 
code to implement Scratch isn't written in Scratch itself.
         - I also want to provide a better debugger and code visualizer 
than Scratch provides.

I'd love to answer any questions about this project or listen to your 
suggestions.  You can contact me at [email protected].

David Buck