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Pharo 12

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Re: Pharo 12

#41
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience when I tried to learn Smalltalk. Pharo By Example is a thing. I haven't read it, but I assume it is forked from or inspired by Squeak By Example, which made things click for me (at least a little). https://books.pharo.org/pharo-by-example9/

IIRC, Squeak By Example is heavily Morphic centric, which is going to immediately diverge from other language Getting Started sections. Not sure if one exists but a Getting Started that focuses on just the Workspace, the Transcript and data processing might be a better introduction to those with experience in more traditional languages.

"Quick-UI-Tour"

https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Learning-Cuis/blob/master/...

"The Cuis Book"

https://cuis-smalltalk.github.io/TheCuisBook/

Re: Pharo 12

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning Rust is at least an order of magnitude harder than learning Smalltalk. This is not to dismiss what you have said. On the contrary, it highlights what must be an enormous miss in how Pharo presents documentation on its landing page.

I don't think that's necessarily what the OP is saying. I agree with OP. Finding documentation to learn to use this absolutely obscure system is near impossible. I seen an announcement about a Pharo release a couple years ago and was like "huh, that sounds cool." Proceded to download it and had no clue about anything. It is not at all like any other IDE. Learning it might not be hard, but when the IDE is absolutely d…

This is a complex issue. In fact, you can work with Pharo in a Unix-like manner. Use an external editor to modify the source code and run the image without any GUI. However, by doing so, you lose the most interesting and enriching aspects of it. The Pharo team has worked hard to integrate better with the world outside the Pharo image. People still complain that it is not like anything else they know, but if it were, they would miss the opportunity to learn how to do things differently and possibly better. There is also a lot of excellent documentation available, especially the MOOC, but it requires newcomers to invest some time.

Re: Pharo 12

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's necessarily what the OP is saying. I agree with OP. Finding documentation to learn to use this absolutely obscure system is near impossible. I seen an announcement about a Pharo release a couple years ago and was like "huh, that sounds cool." Proceded to download it and had no clue about anything. It is not at all like any other IDE. Learning it might not be hard, but when the IDE is absolutely d…

This is a complex issue. In fact, you can work with Pharo in a Unix-like manner. Use an external editor to modify the source code and run the image without any GUI. However, by doing so, you lose the most interesting and enriching aspects of it. The Pharo team has worked hard to integrate better with the world outside the Pharo image. People still complain that it is not like anything else they know, but if it were,…

That totally makes sense. I'm not saying there aren't advantages to what is being done, but what is being done does add a level of complexity to it all.

I think there is a valid reason for tools like Pharo to exist, I don't know the answer to how to improve the situation outside of a (selfish) desire to see better beginner documentation that talks about using it for people that have zero knowledge of Pharo and similar tools. Explain it like I'm 5 type stuff. I suspect it all becomes easier once the general primitives are explained but until they are there's an inscrutability to it.

Re: Pharo 12

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pharo uses green threads https://www.pharo.org/features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_thread

So does it use symmetric multiprocessing at all?

Green threads only mean a M:N mapping to OS threads.

Re: Pharo 12

#46
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pharo uses green threads https://www.pharo.org/features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_thread

That feels very limiting. It's one thing to have a program run only on one core, but you're supposed to have your entire dev environment, including editor and debugger inside the VM. Won't that end up with the env freezing on compute heavy tasks?

The runtime does the mapping, it only means IS threads aren't directly exposed.

Re: Pharo 12

#47
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does it use symmetric multiprocessing at all?

Green threads only mean a M:N mapping to OS threads.

Right, is the N (OS threads) == 1 in this case? It's a specific, technical way of asking if it can run parallel workloads across modern multi-core CPUs.

Re: Pharo 12

#48
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning Rust is at least an order of magnitude harder than learning Smalltalk. This is not to dismiss what you have said. On the contrary, it highlights what must be an enormous miss in how Pharo presents documentation on its landing page.

I don't think that's necessarily what the OP is saying. I agree with OP. Finding documentation to learn to use this absolutely obscure system is near impossible. I seen an announcement about a Pharo release a couple years ago and was like "huh, that sounds cool." Proceded to download it and had no clue about anything. It is not at all like any other IDE. Learning it might not be hard, but when the IDE is absolutely d…

When it starts up there's a welcome-window, in it or like a few clicks down there's a tutorial called ProfStef that gives a quick tour through some data types and ways to execute code.

I think that's a pretty neat introduction to the very basic basics.

Re: Pharo 12

#49
post #7

Weirdest programming language/IDE/Runtime/everything I've ever attempted learning. The sheer oddity + lack of real world example code floating around made it feel impenetrable. To put it into perspective, picking up Rust and writing entry level but real world applications was a walk in the park after coming to terms with the ownership system.

Without an online course or a mentor I'd be lost too. But you only need a two hour introduction to have fun IMO.

Re: Pharo 12

#50
post #25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sheer oddity + lack of real world example code floating around made it feel impenetrable not sure if I understand you, but you have the code of the whole system at your fingertips. Which is certainly "real world" because you are running it :)

real world example means end user applications, not developer tools. i want to see how an application looks like that my mother could use, or that i could sell to my customer. websites. desktop applications that hide the IDE...

Your applications would look however you wanted them look.

https://pharo.org/success/

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