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Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

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Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#151

Post by eternalban »

sctb wrote: post #134
eternalban wrote: post #127

This language is a drama queen. "I languish I languish". O cruel cuts of an ignorant world or a language still in search of timely niche to call home. Could've been a contender on the browser but missed that boat too and we're now stuck with Javascript -- I still can not believe it -- and so what are you good for honey? Die already.

Please don't post unless it's going to be within the guidelines, like we've asked before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When have you asked before? And how is this not within the guidelines?

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#152

Post by throwaway7645 »

gnaritas wrote: post #131
flavio81 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IDE keeps the text files, and that's​ what your source code is made of. Go to any Smalltalk github project and you will find .st files, which are plain text files, and there's your code. I'm a Lisper, i do know what Image-based development is, because that's what I use* You're misunderstanding Smalltalk, probably​ because of hype mongers like the author of this article. Source is text files as usual. This is not…

No I'm not misunderstanding Smalltalk, that Smalltalk now has a git plugin to be able to expose itself in that manner is exactly the kind of jumping through hoops I was referring to, it's taken many years for that to become stable and most of us still don't use it, we use Monticello. And both of those are for sharing code, not for developing, we don't work on those st files, we export them. Don't tell me what I'm thi…

Getting off topic you mentioned doing production work in Smalltalk for a decade and even said "hundreds of millions" in reveue. To me that is quite impressive. Any chance you can point to a project you've done or some prominent Smalltalk apps? Pharo has some minor ones on their site and the author of the article frequently mentions JWARS. I'd like to see more though.

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#153

Post by gnaritas »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #152
gnaritas wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm not misunderstanding Smalltalk, that Smalltalk now has a git plugin to be able to expose itself in that manner is exactly the kind of jumping through hoops I was referring to, it's taken many years for that to become stable and most of us still don't use it, we use Monticello. And both of those are for sharing code, not for developing, we don't work on those st files, we export them. Don't tell me what I'm thi…

Getting off topic you mentioned doing production work in Smalltalk for a decade and even said "hundreds of millions" in reveue. To me that is quite impressive. Any chance you can point to a project you've done or some prominent Smalltalk apps? Pharo has some minor ones on their site and the author of the article frequently mentions JWARS. I'd like to see more though.

The projects I'm talking about are closed source business apps. My app is listed on the Seaside.st success stories page, but I'd rather not talk about it here.

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#154

Post by gnaritas »

flavio81 wrote: post #149
gnaritas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, and not remotely the point being made. Just stop, seriously, you don't know what you're talking about.

You only threw attacks and condescending comments instead of explaining Smalltalk's IDE way of keeping files, which I did. You are doing a disservice to the Smalltalk community with such an attitude.

> You're misunderstanding Smalltalk, probably​ because of hype mongers like the author of this article.

With that comment, you lost any good will I had for you. Despite that, I tried to explain to you anyway what we mean by file based and you simply ignored it and chose to argue with me about st files being plain text which is entirely irrelevant to the conversation. What more do you want? You're wrong, Smalltalk isn't file based, but you don't seem to know what Smalltalk'ers mean by that term, and you refuse to admit you're wrong despite you not even being a Smalltalker. That's willful ignorance, I have no patience for willful ignorance nor do I have any duty to the Smalltalk community, something I know vastly more about than you as I've been a member of it for a very very long time.

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#155

Post by jmarinez »

*ACM, want to see how bad things are, read this thread....

To understand Smalltalk in general one neeeds to understand the impetus; and behind it is Alan Kay. What we do today isn’t really “computing” as envisioned and then created in the 70s. Lots of those terms used back then are used now, but the meaning has been transformed into something entirely different.

It’s unfortunate that most of the things we call “state of the art” are bastardized and horrible versions of those from the 60s and 70s. Yet here we are in 2017 and we can’t have the majority of “computer users” create an essay defending his/her views on climate change with an actual editable running model upon which a civil discussion could be based on. But hey, we will have an iPhone X, so who cares?

Smalltalk is like a gem, a remnant from a magical world that existed and went away - but still possible - if we just took a look way, way back as to where it all originated.

For the CS students out there, get your money’s worth and start asking where all this stuff we have now came from and more importantly, why.

Here’s a good start:

A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages: https://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html “The basic idea is to exploit the duality between functions and tables (or processes and memory). English has nouns which refer to "objects", and verbs which refer to "actors" and "relators". This is a Newtonian epistemology. Modern physics and philosophy tend towards the idea that both "objects" and "actors" are just different aspects of the notion of process. A process has state (a set of relations having only to do with it) which changes as time (defined as interactions with other objects) passes. Using this view "data" is a process which changes "slowly", "function" is a process which changes more rapidly. Each process has the logical attributes of a complete "micro" computer: they can have inputs, give back outputs, act as a memory on file system, perform computations, be interrupted, etc. Since a "computer" can simulate all other computers (modulo time and space), having the notion of a process in a language allows useful idea such as arrays, records, recursive procedures, etc., to be added to the the repertoire at any time.”

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#156

Post by abecedarius »

vesak wrote: post #78
abecedarius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably joking, but fwiw I'm 7 weeks into Duolingo's French lessons right now and found most of this course page to be easily readable without reference to the English. It's much easier than Le Petit Prince, a children's book for which I still need to hit the dictionary a lot.

No, not joking. I have some French courses under my belt from my childhood, but I never got very fluent with it because I never had any use for it. Having an actual need to use the language would be great.

Great! I'd be tempted too if I hadn't done enough Smalltalk to feel comfy already. (I'll have to find other stuff in French. Maybe Laplace on probability? Or more likely Tin-tin...)

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#157

Post by igouy »

flavio81 wrote: post #149
gnaritas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, and not remotely the point being made. Just stop, seriously, you don't know what you're talking about.

You only threw attacks and condescending comments instead of explaining Smalltalk's IDE way of keeping files, which I did. You are doing a disservice to the Smalltalk community with such an attitude.

Correct. iirc some Lispers also have such an attitude ;-)

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#158

Post by igouy »

i_feel_great wrote: post #136
ScottBurson wrote: post #110

Smalltalk’s use of live coding is easy and elegant; not even Common Lisp, Forth, nor Java (hot swapping) can lay claim to that. Does anyone understand what this is talking about? I may not understand exactly what is meant by "live coding", but I think I do it in Common Lisp (via SLIME) all the time. How is it better in Smalltalk?

In Smalltalk, you can pause your application and inspect the objects alive in a stack at the time you paused it, go backwards and forwards in the stack, change them to see an alternative future, make changes and resume. It is the weirdest shit.

And because it's been around for decades, people figure out how create something like that functionality for other languages:

JavaScript Time-Travel Debugger

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/javascript-...

https://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/Marron/Time-Travel-Debugging...

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#159

Post by tom_mellior »

astrobe_ wrote: post #93
tom_mellior wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an image showing many IDE windows, one of which does actually show code you would find if you already knew what the code you were looking for looked like. You could still not copy and paste it. Then there is a textual example consisting of two lines of Posix shell, embedded in which is indeed a tiny Pharo program in a string. The parent's point mostly stands. (Oh, and there is a frickin' popup for a frickin'…

1. Where would you copy/paste it anyway? In a Pharo image of course, 2. Image that you can download (30Mb) and test easily. The installation consists in unzipping the damn thing, that's all you need to run Pharo right away. If you don't like it, you delete the folder. That's the un-install procedure. 3. If you actually do test it for yourself, you'll find plenty of examples in the image itself, ready to copy/paste...…

> If you actually do test it for yourself, you'll find plenty of examples in the image itself, ready to copy/paste

Over the last 15 years or so, I have regularly played around with Squeak and Pharo, and I have not found this to be the case. I mean, yes, there is code, but that's like saying "Oh, you wanna learn C? Here is the Linux source code."

Maybe I just didn't manage to find these great examples because the Pharo community's approach is "it's there, but I won't tell you where exactly; if you can't find it yourself, you are lazy/dumb/not a real programmer".

Re: Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

#160

Post by throwaway7645 »

gnaritas wrote: post #153
throwaway7645 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting off topic you mentioned doing production work in Smalltalk for a decade and even said "hundreds of millions" in reveue. To me that is quite impressive. Any chance you can point to a project you've done or some prominent Smalltalk apps? Pharo has some minor ones on their site and the author of the article frequently mentions JWARS. I'd like to see more though.

The projects I'm talking about are closed source business apps. My app is listed on the Seaside.st success stories page, but I'd rather not talk about it here.

Thanks! The link might be dead...or at least was for several of the success stories. Best of luck in your endeavors.
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