Pharo 7.0 released

Thanks for the feedback.

Have you seen [1] and specifically [2]?

[1] https://pharo.org/documentation

[2] http://books.pharo.org/

Do you have a particular example of a site where the kind of documentation that you would like to find is published for other language (lets say Python)? This could help to understand better which are the expectations and why current books and MOOC are not enough.

There is a nice overview/demo, though unfortunately the quality of the video isn't great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeYEais1eT4&feature=youtu.be

I am using Linux a ton (actually on clusters of boxes) and have a boatload of tools and languages (including low level C and in the past, assembly).

Now, I am also using Pharo to do things on Linux and it is easier and faster to get results out of it, especially when I need to fix a failure.

Pharo is not replacing the OS (even if it may feel like it).

One can deal with a running Pharo remotely (either via VNC directly into Pharo or with Pharo7, using Calypso remote connections).

I am with you on the symbolic aspect but still, having an image that one can inspect is great. I was not understanding its value when I started. Now, I do. And I also find it awesome to have a stacktrace saved to disk on a server so that I can reload it into my desktop box and see exactly where things went south, including variables, values etc. Try that with a core dump.

Now, to each its own and I have a personal little project I should actually deliver, namely being able to expose a fuse filesystem from a Pharo image, so that I can use vim and tmux and those things right from a server. There is no technical issue doing this, just damn code it.

The current Pharo is not an OS inside an OS. UnifiedFFI actually makes it easy to bind with C libraries (heck, I wrapped LibStrophe which is full of callbacks, callbacks that are actually written in Pharo, including full debugging on callbacks, see https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HTG3GB3xdwlje8wADZPj...) and the more Pharo evolves (been there since Pharo 2.0) the more it delivers on what I need.

With the new boostrapping, one can actually have images with just the bare minimum (no UI, no devtools) so that it can run.

Also there is lowcode, a way to do really fast stuff in Pharo (actually putting C types in there): https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01353884/document

What is also interesting for me in Pharo is that it actually stood the test of time. I am sick of new languages that pop up all the time, where one is relearning the basics with half baked libraries. Pharo core classes are solid, work well and after working in there for a while, it becomes second nature to do quite advanced stuff that one would not even dream to do in, say, Java.

Pharo is indeed a tool and in my toolbox, it is one the best ones so far. Coupled with Unix tools, it is a beast.

I not care if it is getting popular or not. What I care is that it works, that I can influence its course and change what is not pleasing me (try that with other toolchains).

And also that its community actually owns it, not a commercial organization like Oracle, Google, Microsoft... In that regard, Pharo is pretty much aligned on Linux.

The Pharo community understands the limitations or warts of Pharo, because there are some. But the features are currently delivering a net positive.

And, a little thing that is quite important: I have fun creating and maintaining systems I have done in Pharo.

This really contrasts with other solutions where fighting with accidental complexity takes 50% of the time, if not more.

Anyway, to each its own. I can relate to being angry when engineering. Pharo is lowering the level on my WTF-o-meter, which is actually good.

From my experience as a recent Pharo user (started in October 2018 with the Pharo MOOC), the two main issues with existing documentation are

1) Much of it is outdated. 2) Much of it supposes significant prior knowledge of Pharo.

Once you start to become familiar with Pharo, neither is much of a problem. You see that the screenshot of Pharo 5 resembles what you see on Pharo 7 in spite of superficial differences. And you picked up enough of the jargon to be able to judge if some documentation is close to your level or not.

For someone who downloads Pharo 7, starts it up, and wonders "what now", most of the existing documentation is confusing. The MOOC was a much better starting point back in October, but with the new system browser in Pharo 7, it's seriously outdated as well.

I sympathize with your criticism, which reflects my first impressions of Smalltalk when I played with Smalltalk 80 on my Atari ST 25 years ago. An impressive system, but isolated from the rest of the universe.

However, today's Pharo has made significant progress with interfacing to "foreign" stuff. The file system has become a first-class citizen of the environment. There is an FFI to work with C libraries. And of course support for network protocols. Source code management is based on Git. It's the GUI that remains in a world (window) of its own, but otherwise Pharo's system integration level is just a notch below languages such as Python or Ruby.