Smalltalk is one of my favourite languages but a decent Smalltalk implementation that fits with your native window manager is hard to find. The point of GNU Smalltalk is that it works “headlessly” (Smalltalk invented the graphical user-interface and the integrated development environment so this is quite a departure), so I can still use my favourite text editor and run stuff from the command line. Just like Ruby!

However, it’s taken me a couple of hours to figure out how to simply connect to a database. But now I have, here it is:

• Install GNU Smalltalk (in my case using MacPorts):
  sudo port install gst
• Start GNU Smalltalk and create a working image:
  cd /Users/rahoulb/source/st
gst
st> ObjectMemory snapshot: 'work.im'.
• Ctrl-D to exit Smalltalk and then restart using your new image:
  gst -I work.im
• Load the DBI database driver:
  st> PackageLoader fileInPackage: 'DBI'.
  Load the MySQL driver:
  st> PackageLoader fileInPackage: 'DBD-MySQL'.
  Save your image so you don’t need to reload these packages again:
  st> ObjectMemory snapshot.
• Open a connection to your database:
  st>con:= DBI.Connection connect: 'dbi:MySQL:dbname=mydatabase' user: 'myuser' password: 'mypassword'.
  Grab some data:
  st>results:= con select: 'select name from customers limit 10;'
• Bask in the glory of your data