Development of Smalltalk in China

Smalltalk is a well-known object-oriented programming language. In the late 1980s, we developed Smalltalk on a DEC VAX/8600 computer to promote education and research of object-oriented programming in China. Smalltalk can also be used as the language of object-oriented database e.g., Gemstone. However, an object-oriented data model makes it hard to define views and handle role multiplicity as well as object migration. We extended the object-oriented data model with the new concepts of deputy objects and deputy classes. The new model is called the object deputy model and can provide a unified realization of object views, roles and migration. It can be implemented in Smalltalk. In China, there are other Smalltalk-related research projects such as the Smalltalk program understanding support system and Chinese character information processing in Smalltalk. We introduce these research works.