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SmallJS README

SmallJS logo
Official website: small-js.org

News - Tutorial for SmallJS in the making - 15-DEC-2025

The SmallJS website now has a tutorial page for learning SmallJS and Smalltalk.
It's still under construction, but the link is: small-js.org/Tutorial .
The first part of the tutorial can be easily done online in the Playground .
If you have any feedback for wishes for the tutorial,
please add a comment to github issue #58 or mail to info at small-js.org.

Happy learning!

News - Working on SmallJS v2.0 - 12-NOV-2025

The latest commits now give SmallJS full support for async, await and promises!
Almost async calls classes have been converted form callbacks to use promises,
making calling code cleaner, more concise and easier to debug.
Check out Async.md for usage instructions.

Enjoy!

Introducing SmallJS

SmallJS is a free and open source implementation of the elegant and powerful Smalltalk-80 (ST) language.
It compiles to JavaScript (JS) that runs in modern browsers or in recent Node.js.\

SmallJS is file based, not image based, so you can develop in your favorite IDE.
The default setup is for Visual Studio Code, with ST syntax coloring and step-debugging!
You code separately from the SmallJS base libraries (image).
Only the parts you use are imported automatically when running your app.

SmallJS is fully object oriented, so customizable on every level.
For usability, ST class and method names are kept mostly equal to their familiar JS counterparts.

JS libraries already encapsulated in ST are:

  • Browsers: Document, Window, HTML elements, events, CSS, streams.
  • Node.js: HTTP server, Express, file mgmt, 3 databases, 5 AI providers.
  • Desktop apps: NWjs, Electron, NodeGui.

To get you started quickly, there are several example projects using the above.

Code example

Example.png

Installing

To install SmallJS check out: Installing.md

Examples

For a first impression of running SmallJS code, see the example projects: Examples.md

Playground

To get a feel for Smalltalk and to quickly test out ST expressions, a playground is accessible though the offical website: small-js.org/Playground

Documentation

The complete SmallJS documentation, including a tutorial, is located here: Documentation.md

Contributions

Contributions to SmallJS that are not part of the main system. but show interesting applications: Contributions.md