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Pharo 7.0 released

pharo.org

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Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#201
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which apparently does nothing.

I got 1405006117752879898543142606244511569936384000000000 on my command line after running those commands.

How many of the programmers you know would be able to glance at the first ten of those digits and be able to say the result was correct?

How many would be able to say that `Hello, world` was correct?

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the Smalltalk and apparently now the Pharo people don't seem to understand is that the entire OS is the IDE, "the image". My OS and all of its rules, tools and configuration, the UNIX philosophy, the POSIX standard, all of its history and convention: _that_ is my dev environment and it's as LIVE as anything can be. Not some one-off unicorn IDE - no matter how awesome it is, sorry guys. My entire toolchain in all…

> Without the UNIX philosophy none of this would even get off the ground. So the UNIX philosophy was the only possible way computing could have gone to result in a diverse set of systems that communicate with each other? Is there some sort of CS proof of this claim? Or was it just how history played out? > For some reason some people think programming is hard because you have to create some classes and struggle with…

LOL sorry about that.

But still, yeah.

> So the UNIX philosophy was the only possible way computing could have gone to result in a diverse set of systems that communicate with each other?

I don't know and it is not relevant. If you're so inclined you may come up with another paradigm. Anyway, Pharo in particular is not such a paradigm, it's a fancy tool. Fancy, but a tool and it should behave as such and should co-operate, and it doesn't and that makes me very, very, very angry. And upset. And hurt. :-)

> Alan Kay and some others have thought programming would be more productive if it took place at a higher level than manipulating text and files.

I understand, but saying "text manipulation" is quite derogatory. It is _symbol manipulation_, that is what we are doing. The underlying mechanisms of the OS, filesystem and various media are irrelevant. What if I don't work with files, but "symbol maps" or whatever the F* some academic can come up with in his own custom fancy GUI tool. It doesn't change one bit. I still have to manipulate symbols and it still needs to be encoded somewhere. Increases on the fancy-dimension mean decreases on the is-robust-and-useful-in-a-general-way-dimension, not to mention the works-at-all-in-20-years-dimension.

Text files are just low common denominators. They are simple to understand and work well, not only across space, but more importantly, time as well.

> Well, ask someone with a lot of VB or Smalltalk experience how much the environment slows them down in comparison. Because you often hear the opposite.

I know, but that's not the point. I'm not saying Pharo is bad at what it does, being an excellent IDE. It's wonderful. I'm opposed to the ideology of throwing away all UNIX lessons and integrating everything into one God-system. I guess I've upset not only the Smalltalk, but now also the Windows people. Sorry.

> I guess debuggers, refactoring and class browsers aren't useful, then.

These are aids, typically implemented graphically, but not always - Vim has excellent autocomplete, refactoring and class-browsing plugins. Yes, some tasks map excellent to the visual metaphor. Scanning hierarchies and seeing high-level overviews are indeed useful abstractions, but that is not the point. The point is that if you want an excellent debugger, use an excellent debugger. If you want a good refactoring tool, use a good refactoring tool. Don't throw it all in one system and call it a day. That is not the UNIX way and yes, I am saying that is the superior way. In all of its vulgar, plebeian ways, the UNIXes have stood the test of time and I'd seriously reconsider dumping that.

~ Angry, but generally peaceful if slightly anxious and over-caffeinated Engineer

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the Smalltalk and apparently now the Pharo people don't seem to understand is that the entire OS is the IDE, "the image". My OS and all of its rules, tools and configuration, the UNIX philosophy, the POSIX standard, all of its history and convention: _that_ is my dev environment and it's as LIVE as anything can be. Not some one-off unicorn IDE - no matter how awesome it is, sorry guys. My entire toolchain in all…

> Without the UNIX philosophy none of this would even get off the ground. So the UNIX philosophy was the only possible way computing could have gone to result in a diverse set of systems that communicate with each other? Is there some sort of CS proof of this claim? Or was it just how history played out? > For some reason some people think programming is hard because you have to create some classes and struggle with…

Update: I'm using it now for a while and it's quite epic. So yeah, it's awesome, but in a forbidden fruit kind of way that I cannot condone and thus none of you guys should be using it.

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#204

The main issues that prevents me to have an interest in Pharo are the following two: - There is no real multithreading support - It's not easily embeddable I believe that there are attempts to tackle these problems but what is the status?

The traditional problem embedding is that the VM did a lot of window configuration before the image started. This has all been stripped out of the "minheadless" builds, which have defined a "virtual machine interface" used like... https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/blob/Cog/p...

and... https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/blob/Cog/p...

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#205
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty chaotic postcard. I think I get the point that it's trying to make, but at first glance it doesn't exactly convey the idea of simplicity.

Keep in mind that seems to be the entire syntax. Doesn't look chaotic to me, and I'm not even a Pharo (or Smalltalk) user!

correct. that is the entire syntax.

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#206
post #200
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do something like: `Stdio stdout nextPutAll: 'Hello, World!'.`

Are you suggesting that `FileStream stdout` doesn't work, or that using `Stdio stdout` is in some way better, or that `nextPutAll:` will add a newline, or that … ?

I think `FileStream` is deprecated in the new version of Pharo.

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#207

Looks interesting. Getting a weird error when installing it via Homebrew, though: "“Pharo6.1-64” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash." Anyone experience anything similar?

I think this is some BS that has to do with OSX's "security" and that applications like this are required to be in the Applications folder. I could be wrong.

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without the UNIX philosophy none of this would even get off the ground. So the UNIX philosophy was the only possible way computing could have gone to result in a diverse set of systems that communicate with each other? Is there some sort of CS proof of this claim? Or was it just how history played out? > For some reason some people think programming is hard because you have to create some classes and struggle with…

LOL sorry about that. But still, yeah. > So the UNIX philosophy was the only possible way computing could have gone to result in a diverse set of systems that communicate with each other? I don't know and it is not relevant. If you're so inclined you may come up with another paradigm. Anyway, Pharo in particular is not such a paradigm, it's a fancy tool. Fancy, but a tool and it should behave as such and should co-op…

Your comparison of Pharo/Smalltalk with Unix is pretty accurate and is the one much people misses, comparing Pharo with other computer language, without taking into account all the companion tooling to make such system work: debuggers, editors, DVCS, graphical toolkits and a long etc. A more detailed explanation of how Smalltalk compares to the whole Unix environment can be found in "Tracing the Dyanbook"[1], but goes in the same route as you (with a pretty detailed philosophical, educational and historical view of the Smalltalk/Dynabook approach about what computing could be).

[1] https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831...

So Pharo/Smalltalk can be orders or magnitude less complex that a full OS and yes is running inside one, but for me that means that it gives you a unified way of dealing with environment/OS complexity (mostly incidental) by providing an interactive, live, supporting place to thing about your prototypes. I made Grafoscopio[2] using Pharo, after trying the Operative System approach and translating symbols to files and dealing with that mismatch and with a plethora of (incidental) complexity (See [3]). Despite of being a Unix/Linux user since 20+ years and a novice coder at that time, the feeling of empowerment provided by Pharo compared to the tools I was using in Linux before was pretty big.

[2] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html [3] http://mutabit.com/offray/static/blog/output/posts/grafoscop...

I'm glad you have decided to test the tool by yourself and I highly recommend reading [1] for a deeper understanding on how Unix and Pharo/Smalltalk compare to each other and how the last implodes complexity, even when living inside the first one.

Cheers,

Re: Pharo 7.0 released

#209
Is it possible to integrate Pharo with KDE so the windows won't be trapped inside the Pharo window (I don't really like MDI) and would have system-set decorations (I love using "keep above", "keep below" and "shade" buttons I've added via the window manager configuration)?
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