August 10, 2026
Tiny squeaks, huge feelings
Squeak/Smalltalk 6.1 Release Notes
Squeak turns 30 with a big glow-up, but fans are still fighting over the blurry old look
TLDR: Squeak 6.1 is a major new release for the nearly 30-year-old programming system, adding new tools, bringing back old features, and honoring Vanessa Freudenberg. Fans praised its magical ability to inspect live code, while critics dragged its dated, blurry-looking interface and asked whether newer rivals have already stolen the spotlight.
After four years, Squeak 6.1 "Vanessa" has finally arrived, bringing a mountain of upgrades to the long-running Smalltalk system: a new tree browser, the return of Objectland, and a long list of fixes for browsing, debugging, inspecting, and generally poking around inside running code. It’s also a sentimental release, dedicated to Vanessa Freudenberg, and the project is clearly leaning into its legacy as it nears the big 3-0.
But the real show was in the comments, where the community instantly split into two camps: the true believers and the why-is-this-still-so-blurry brigade. One admirer went full philosophy-professor mode, declaring that learning Smalltalk is how you discover what object-oriented programming “actually means,” then casually dropped the spicy claim that “almost all of Javascript’s good parts come from Smalltalk.” That’s the kind of line that can start a nerd family feud at Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, a grumpy veteran crashed the nostalgia party by complaining that after 10 years, the interface still looks pixely and slow on modern high-resolution screens. Ouch. Others were more curious than combative, asking how Squeak compares to shiny rival Glamorous Toolkit and begging for reading lists on its unusual interface style. The sweetest praise came from fans obsessed with Squeak’s party trick: clicking around a live app and instantly inspecting the code behind a button like a backstage pass to the software itself. In short: Squeak dropped a massive update, and the comments turned into a mix of tribute, nostalgia, nitpicking, and “your favorite language owes my favorite language royalties.”
Key Points
- •Squeak 6.1 "Vanessa" was announced with major highlights including a new tree browser, the return of Objectland, kernel infrastructure changes, and tool and UI improvements.
- •The release notes say that since the prior release four years earlier, the project merged more than 1,700 patches and over 9,000 method changes.
- •The document is intended both as a changelog and as a practical guide, with links to code pointers and interactive examples for exploring new features.
- •Morphic received a major overhaul, especially in tree morphs, adding filtering, recursive find, automatic expansion options, drag-and-drop improvements, and stability and performance updates.
- •Additional improvements include text editor behavior, Morphic API changes, revised menu construction and debug menus, improved high-DPI and theme support, and multiple UI bug fixes.