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Pharo 9

pharo.org

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Re: Pharo 9

#121

Post by igouy »

zabzonk wrote: post #77
a2800276 wrote: post #73

The page seems to be going out of it's way to not mention the word "Smalltalk". Does anyone have an idea why that is? Does Smalltalk have such a bad reputation nowadays or has someone trademarked the term?

I've noticed that as well - it's a bit strange given that Pharo is a fork of Squeak, which does proclaim its ST origins on its front page. I wouldn't say Smalltalk has a bad rep nowadays, but it used to be knocked for being too expensive (the cost of ST licences back when was beyond a joke), too slow, and producing nasty-looking non-native GUIs. These have almost all been fixed.

> cost of ST licences back when was beyond a joke

March 7, 1988

"Smalltalk/V 286 is available now and costs $199.95"

https://books.google.com/books?id=CD8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=P...

> nasty-looking non-native GUIs

The "non-native GUI" was quite important because Smalltalk was running on MS-DOS — not on MS-Windows.

Re: Pharo 9

#122

Post by igouy »

discreteevent wrote: post #118
pjmlp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually language developers consistently underestimate the importance of large corporations pushing languages no matter what developers think about them. Smalltalk lost the day IBM decided to join Sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisualAge > VisualAge Micro Edition, which supports development of embedded Java applications and cross system development, is a reimplementation of the IDE in Java. This version of Visua…

Java was free and open source and based on files rather than an image.

Java was free. (And marketed by a large organization.)

Re: Pharo 9

#123

Post by [deleted] »

101011 wrote: post #62
the-dude wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, I don't do mobile. I wasn't commenting on the layout, I meant the description of the features, the animations and 'balloons'. One of the most polished presentations of features I've seen on any OSS project.

Don't do mobile?

[deleted]

Re: Pharo 9

#124

Post by StevePerkins »

pjmlp wrote: post #103
asah wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smalltalk never really got substantial adoption...

Thanks Java :(

Smalltalk first appeared in 1972, and was a stable commercial product by 1980.

Java didn't hit the market until over a decade and a half later.

If you can't build adoption with a 15+ year head start, then it's not the next generation's fault. It just wasn't going to happen.

Re: Pharo 9

#125

Post by floxy »

It seems like the code/system browser has essentially stayed the same since Smalltalk-80. See Figure 17.11 on page 298 (PDF page 320) of the blue book [1]. I've often wondered about "modernizing" it, or at least exploring other options for interacting with the source. Have there been attempts at this? This is pretty far down on my list of things to fund even if I were to win the lottery some day. But I like to think about it anyway.

[1] http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....

Re: Pharo 9

#126

Post by oneplane »

asah wrote: post #104
xkriva11 wrote: post #29

This is a long list of rare features that make Pharo interesting: https://pharo.org/features

AFAICT the big benefit of Pharo is on-the-fly introspection and the tooling to support dynamic introspection. quick q: I can see the benefit for creating developer tools like the IDE and maybe for creating domain specific languages (DSLs)... but what "regular" applications benefit from this? in particular, I can see (widespread use of...) introspection making it difficult for a developer of one large Pharo codebase t…

There are a lot of cases where good enough is actually good enough. Python, Java, C#, Go, TypeScript, they are not 'pure enough' to 'too OOP' for some, but at the end of they day, they are good enough to realise the potential that the business process they support requires.

Re: Pharo 9

#128

Post by xkriva11 »

floxy wrote: post #125

It seems like the code/system browser has essentially stayed the same since Smalltalk-80. See Figure 17.11 on page 298 (PDF page 320) of the blue book [1]. I've often wondered about "modernizing" it, or at least exploring other options for interacting with the source. Have there been attempts at this? This is pretty far down on my list of things to fund even if I were to win the lottery some day. But I like to think…

There was a lot of attempts, Glamorous Toolkit is exploring one alternative approach now. But the basic concept seems to be very solid. Think of the code base as the fractal system you want to explore. Then the browser provides several well-placed views with increasing zoom levels. It is hard to beat it. When you explore, for example, senders of a given message, you jump to another position in the fractal that conceptually looks similar. And you need to keep track to do not lose orientation. Exploring a classical source file is like moving in fractal on a fixed zoom level.

Re: Pharo 9

#129

Post by igouy »

liminal wrote: post #102

Are there any perceived shortcomings of Smalltalk that caused it not to take hold?

There were "perceived shortcomings" although Smalltalk use seems to have grown in the decade following.

IBM taught "object-oriented software technology to experienced procedural programmers" and studied that experience — 'We read and heard many stories about confident and experienced programmers' plunging into self-study tutorials, only to give up in frustration after several hours, still wondering, "Where is the application code?" … New programmers often became lost in the hierarchy or spent considerable time in unfocused exploration of the interactive tools.'

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/making-use

Technical shortcomings, September 1988 — "… currently unrealistic to expect that an excellent rapid prototyping system can also be an excellent application delivery system."

https://static.miraheze.org/triplescriptswiki/4/49/Wirfs-Bro...

"Smalltalk, C++ knock heads. Computerworld 29, 45 (Nov. 6, 1995)

https://books.google.com/books?id=oKDIlxbMaS4C&pg=PA153

Re: Pharo 9

#130

Post by philipswood »

discreteevent wrote: post #118
pjmlp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually language developers consistently underestimate the importance of large corporations pushing languages no matter what developers think about them. Smalltalk lost the day IBM decided to join Sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisualAge > VisualAge Micro Edition, which supports development of embedded Java applications and cross system development, is a reimplementation of the IDE in Java. This version of Visua…

Java was free and open source and based on files rather than an image.

Free as in "free beer", but not open source until much, much later.

Interestingly enough the JVM hotspot compiler was done by Smalltalkers (checkout Strongtalk)

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