# Squeak Smalltalk

25 Hacker News commenters recommended Squeak Smalltalk and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free Smalltalk environment people use to learn object-oriented programming and explore ideas, with an image-based workflow that runs the same across platforms. Critics say the UI is pixelated and slow.

## Why people recommend it

- Teaches object-oriented programming concepts (3 comments): "learning Smalltalk will make you understand what "object oriented" actually means" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243035)) "Squeak and Scheme were mind expanding points of curriculum for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49253848)) "I'm glad it was part of the cirriculum." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246164))
- Enjoyable for personal exploration (4 comments): "still enjoy following the progress of Squeak and all of its spinoffs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247550)) "a novel software development experience that I'm very glad I did" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446802)) "used that a lot for my own personal exploration" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46149863))
- Image-based workflow, easy deployment (3 comments): "Images run bit-identical on all platforms because they are byte coded virtual machines" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49251368)) "Smalltalk's "wow" moment was the concept of a persistently running image" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49244305)) "The image based workflow made deploying it surprisingly easy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50245645))
- Runs on many platforms (2 comments): "We used to run (around 2009) Squeak on more platforms than Linux, they all still work in the 32 versions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49250596)) "Images run bit-identical on all platforms because they are byte coded virtual machines" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49251368))

## What people warn about

- UI feels dated and slow (2 comments): "The UI has been a huge impediment in my getting into Squeak development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49244193)) "The UI is still pixely and slow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243210))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Pharo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pharo.md): 21 recommend
- [Cuis Smalltalk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cuis-smalltalk.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Squeak Smalltalk", https://hackerapproved.com/p/squeak/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).