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Pharo 8.0

pharo.org

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Re: Pharo 8.0

#31

Post by zamadatix »

badsectoracula wrote: post #11
atemerev wrote: post #5

So, still no HiDPI/Retina support. This is probably the most requested feature since at least Pharo 4, and nobody seems to be interested in implementing it.

If it is the most requested, then perhaps one of those requesting it should try to do it themselves? HiDPI support sounds like a high effort low reward task (according to this[0] HiDPI monitors practically do not exist in the wild and chances are none of the main developers have one), so unless someone who really wants it puts the effort themselves it may take a long time to appear. Generally speaking unless there is…

How is a table of resolutions supposed to tell you anything about DPI? A 640x480 screen can be high DPI while a 3840x2160p screen standard DPI. Or the other way around. Or neither. Or both. It depends on both resolution AND physical size.

It'd also be interesting if they were even checking physical resolution or virtual (scaled) resolution.

Re: Pharo 8.0

#32

Post by arnsholt »

fooblitzky wrote: post #21
zerr wrote: post #2

Pharo always looks cute, but does anyone here use it, even for toy stuff?

I use it, mostly for toy stuff (work is 80% Java). Once you get used to it, Smalltalk is really the most amazing development environment. It's hard to describe how it feels to work with live objects - it's an incredible speed boost, because instead of grepping logs or stepping through code, you just interact with the objects directly, you can examine the state of instance variables, add new methods, or change code wh…

I worked on a large legacy application (in production since 1996) implemented in Smalltalk for a couple of years. I don't feel we had any particular issues keeping the codebase consistent due to Smalltalk itself (there were some issues due to the Smalltalk system's version control system which was pretty terrible), but Smalltalk enabled us to implement new features in the application very smoothly, and debugging issues was simply a joy compared to other systems I've worked in. Finally, we could also fix bugs in the platform itself, which was quite useful since the vendor stopped supporting this particular Smalltalk compiler around 2000; I did a couple of small but quite important fixes like this while working on the project.

Re: Pharo 8.0

#33

Post by bjoli »

zerr wrote: post #2

Pharo always looks cute, but does anyone here use it, even for toy stuff?

Writing small web services in seaside has been like living in the distant future since something like 2006. JavaScript made a lot of strides towards making seaside less impressive in recent years, but as someone who hates frontend stuff I still vastly prefer it.

Playing with it in 2006 was like using magic. Sure, it is not REST, but whenever I show it off to someone used to handling a lot of stuff client side they still have to pinch themselves :)

Re: Pharo 8.0

#35

Post by klez »

armagon wrote: post #9
zerr wrote: post #2

Pharo always looks cute, but does anyone here use it, even for toy stuff?

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson I did some work in Smalltalk (working on a mod of Scratch 1.4, which was written in Squeak Smalltalk from the turn of the century). Once you got used to it, it was amazing. The environment is lively, and you can debug into everything. The tech is great; it is just that the community of people who know it is relatively small. If you want…

> On the other hand, if you wanted to make a cross-platform desktop application that doesn't look native (which, given the prevalence of Electron, doesn't seem to matter too much to people), this would be an excellent choice.

Yeah, as if people are going to install a whole virtual machine to run a chat application...

Wait...

Re: Pharo 8.0

#36

Post by protomyth »

arnsholt wrote: post #32
fooblitzky wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it, mostly for toy stuff (work is 80% Java). Once you get used to it, Smalltalk is really the most amazing development environment. It's hard to describe how it feels to work with live objects - it's an incredible speed boost, because instead of grepping logs or stepping through code, you just interact with the objects directly, you can examine the state of instance variables, add new methods, or change code wh…

I worked on a large legacy application (in production since 1996) implemented in Smalltalk for a couple of years. I don't feel we had any particular issues keeping the codebase consistent due to Smalltalk itself (there were some issues due to the Smalltalk system's version control system which was pretty terrible), but Smalltalk enabled us to implement new features in the application very smoothly, and debugging issu…

Are you using VSE? I've wondered what happened to all the folks on it. I assumed most converted to VisualWorks, but it would be interesting if Pharo becomes an option.

Re: Pharo 8.0

#37

Post by arnsholt »

protomyth wrote: post #36
arnsholt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on a large legacy application (in production since 1996) implemented in Smalltalk for a couple of years. I don't feel we had any particular issues keeping the codebase consistent due to Smalltalk itself (there were some issues due to the Smalltalk system's version control system which was pretty terrible), but Smalltalk enabled us to implement new features in the application very smoothly, and debugging issu…

Are you using VSE? I've wondered what happened to all the folks on it. I assumed most converted to VisualWorks, but it would be interesting if Pharo becomes an option.

Yeah, VSE is the culprit. I think the main reason the application was never moved off VSE is that the application is developed by a consultancy firm (my employer at the time) for a public-sector client, and the leadership of the client isn't interested in investing in long-term stuff for this particular program, they'd rather try to get an extraordinary allocation on the order of a few hundred million USD and do a massive, more buzzword-compliant rewrite of a big portion of their application portfolio. Never mind that the application in question is strategically important for their ability to do their job and it's already suffering under a rather long period of under-funding and general mismanagement from the client's side. Replacing VSE would have been nice, Pharo even better (but then you need to do something about almost 25 years of GUI made in WindowBuilder...).

The funny part is that even though VSE isn't a very good Smalltalk, it's one of the most productive environments I've ever worked in.

Re: Pharo 8.0

#38

Post by lucas_membrane »

fmakunbound wrote: post #19
armagon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson I did some work in Smalltalk (working on a mod of Scratch 1.4, which was written in Squeak Smalltalk from the turn of the century). Once you got used to it, it was amazing. The environment is lively, and you can debug into everything. The tech is great; it is just that the community of people who know it is relatively small. If you want…

I also thoroughly enjoy Seaside. There's also https://iliadproject.github.io/ for another approach.

Iliad says Latest commit 0be1977 on Jul 18, 2017. Seaside says last commit 24 August 2019. Any actively maintained web framework that will work with Pharo 8?

Re: Pharo 8.0

#39

Post by Zenchess »

zerr wrote: post #2

Pharo always looks cute, but does anyone here use it, even for toy stuff?

I always use smalltalk when the problem would allow for it since I'm much more productive in smalltalk than anything else. It's great for certain random tasks - i.e. Want to set up a websocket server for some reason? Program it in smalltalk, test it interactively (literally debugging on execution errors, fixing and resuming execution until it works).

  If I'm writing a native windows app I'll go with dolphin smalltalk which imo is much nicer to work with and gives you a native gui.  I have to say though pharo is getting better all the time and has an active community.

Re: Pharo 8.0

#40

Post by e12e »

armagon wrote: post #9
zerr wrote: post #2

Pharo always looks cute, but does anyone here use it, even for toy stuff?

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson I did some work in Smalltalk (working on a mod of Scratch 1.4, which was written in Squeak Smalltalk from the turn of the century). Once you got used to it, it was amazing. The environment is lively, and you can debug into everything. The tech is great; it is just that the community of people who know it is relatively small. If you want…

> if you wanted to make a cross-platform desktop application that doesn't look native

I'll just mention that the announcement (which is now down) and the readme mentions spec2:

> Spec 2 (preview) - UI building framework with multiple backends

The announcement (main hn link) mentioned spec2 and native look together.

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