Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/behold-pharo-the-modern-smalltalk-38e132c46053

by louiscyphre • 9 years ago

157 169 9 years ago

medium.com

tangue• 9 years ago

There's a Mooc starting in december by the INRIA ( French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation )

https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/course-v1:inria+41010+sessio...

vesak2• 9 years ago

Oddly, I'm more fascinated that I'll be able to learn French reading through the materials of that course. Perhaps Smalltalk will follow on the side :)

carlosgg2• 9 years ago

The course is bilingual.

abecedarius2• 9 years ago

You're probably joking, but fwiw I'm 7 weeks into Duolingo's French lessons right now and found most of this course page to be easily readable without reference to the English. It's much easier than Le Petit Prince, a children's book for which I still need to hit the dictionary a lot.

carlosgg2• 9 years ago

Beat me to posting it. :)

Edit: Actually, the course starts on October 16.

baldfat• 9 years ago

I start from stupid since I was 8 on Programming Languages. I taught myself Assembly and Pascal before I was a teenager.

I learned Racket and Smalltalk to be a better problem solver. I ended up becoming a MUCH better programmer due to these two. Racket stuck and I use it for all my personal projects but Pharo is a great learning tool at the very least.

muraiki• 9 years ago

After starting out in Python, I did exactly the same thing with Racket and Smalltalk, which substantially improved my programming ability. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only crazy person here. :) I haven't used Pharo recently, but when using other languages (especially dynamic ones) I really miss it!

akkartik• 9 years ago

On a tangent: I wonder how everybody who writes for Medium feels about the new Quora-style nag screens.

(I can only go on tangents since I saw the nag screen and bounced.)

imglorp• 9 years ago

It strikes me as identical to the newspapers' paywalls, in that they need the income. Except in this case, the income is from your information, not from your wallet.

I think some system of anonymous digital micropayments, integrated with the browser, is the only thing that's going to save us from paywall/adwall hell.

eadmund• 9 years ago

No nag screens with NoScript!

edmundhuber• 9 years ago

Is there a snippet of example code to look at? I browsed the pharo.org website, but couldn't find an example to give me a taste. I even tried googling "pharo example" and with a brief look at the results didn't find an example.

Today, there are hundreds of programming languages competing for attention. It is in your interest to put an example front and center of why one should spend time looking into yet another programming language.

protomyth• 9 years ago

You can download whole books with Pharo examples http://files.pharo.org/books/

Y_Y• 9 years ago

Maybe a whole book is overkill. When I'm checking out a new language I like to see a couple of short, accessible examples to get a feel for the language.

Like this clock[0]:

  Time now asValueHolder in: [ :clock |
    [ [ 
        1 second asDelay wait. 
        clock value: Time now ] repeat ] fork. 
    clock inspect ]

[0] https://medium.com/concerning-pharo/elegant-pharo-code-bb590...

otakucode• 9 years ago

I've always found the 'image' environment to be far more interesting than the language of Smalltalk itself. If you do find just code snippets, you're missing out on what I, at least, see as the most significant feature of the whole thing. The way it goes about defining the code is clunky, but the overall structure of 'images' and the workflow involved with them is fascinating. I could easily see something similar being the future of containerization when implemented in some other language.

jhbadger• 9 years ago

Lots of other languages work/worked that way. System images were a common feature of many Lisp systems and some Forth systems in the 1980s.

theamk• 9 years ago

That image environment sounds scary to me. I used to do a lot of hardware development, and what I love most about software is that you can always restart from the clean plate (by restarting the program) and/or undo your previous work (with version control).

From what I understand, none of this applies to Smalltalk. You always modify code on the fly, so you may end up with properties which exists, but no current code ever sets them. Or your program ends up in the invalid state, and you have no idea why -- is it a genuine bug or did it happen few minutes ago, when the function was still incomplete?

zerr• 9 years ago

Opposite feeling here - mutable/persistent images kept me away from Smalltalk.

TeddyDD• 9 years ago

I fell opposite: I appreciate simplicity of Smalltalk syntax, but I prefer environment bases of files

tom_mellior5• 9 years ago

The language is a dialect of Smalltalk, so looking for Smalltalk examples might be more productive. There are some useful examples at http://wiki.c2.com/?SmalltalkExamples, such as (double quotes are comments):

    " this sends a message to the transcript "

    Transcript show: 'hello world '.


    " compute 10 factorial and send the result to the Transcript "

    Transcript show: 10 factorial.


    " now, try this: "

    Transcript show: 100 factorial.


    " a loop (the timesRepeat-method evaluates its argument n-times)"

    10 timesRepeat: [
        Transcript show:'hello'.
        Transcript cr.
    ].


    " another loop "

    1 to: 10 do:[ :i |
        Transcript show:i.
        Transcript show:' '.
        Transcript show:i sqt.
        Transcript cr.
    ].


    " looping over a collection "

    #('a' 'b' 'c' ) do:[:each |
        Transcript show: each.
        Transcript cr.
    ].

nobleach• 9 years ago

I always find LearnXinYminutes to be a cool "quick look" at a language syntax: https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/smalltalk/

mbil• 9 years ago

Here's a "Pharo Cheat Sheet" PDF from pharo.org http://files.pharo.org/media/pharoCheatSheet.pdf

gnaritas12• 9 years ago

Smalltalk is not "yet another programming language"; Smalltalk is the language all those other OO programming languages copied. You should look into it because it is the source of the object oriented paradigm and it'll make you a better OO programmer in all of those other languages.

lucozade• 9 years ago

Sorry to be that guy but a lot of what we've come to know as OO is more directly descended from Simula because that was a big inspiration for Bjarne.

As such, C++, Java and C#, which constitute a significant chunk of OO programming, are probably better thought of as descended from Simula (and C).

There's a clearer lineage to the likes of Ruby and Objective-C, and to a lesser extent Javascript and Python.

I would definitely concur regarding looking into it, it definitely makes you think about things in a different way.

Whether or not it makes one a better programmer, I can't say. I only programmed professionally in it for a relatively brief time and it was a hugely frustrating experience. I was glad to get out of it.

In the sense that it made me understand that a programming environment has a big influence on how well a codebase can scale then, yes, I learnt loads. But that was because it really wasn't very good at scaling without an awful lot of TLC. I moved onto a Java application which was bliss by comparison (ironically, given its reputation for classpath hell etc).

This was some years ago mind so the state of the art of Smalltalk has, I'm sure, moved on.

shalabhc3• 9 years ago

This may not be immediately apparent, but I discovered that Smalltalk did not fit into the 'programming language' concepts in my head. I think of a typical bytecode VM language as

  [source code] -> [interpreter] -> [running program]

Instead Smalltalk is more like

  [running program] + [auto persistence] + [editing tools]

So you don't modify large gobs of source code files, you modify the running program from within - aka live editing. The running program consists of a network of interconnected objects. You use the textual syntax also - but only to modify parts of the already live program (e.g. you could 'install' a new method on an existing class object). You inspect the running program using graphical browsers (typically also part of the same program) - and everything you modify is live immediately.

The syntax of Smalltlak is interesting (can be seen here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#Syntax). But the more interesting aspects of the experience are the live editing, working with network of objects, hybrid text/non-text ways of modifying these objects, etc.

vvdcect• 9 years ago

[running program] + [auto persistence] + [editing tools]

How do you use TDD when coding like this?

spc476• 9 years ago

So, how do you distribute the program you've just written? That's the issue I have with image based languages.

throwaway76457• 9 years ago

I've asked the same things many times, but that's largely irrelevant. Smalltalk is just different. I'm more of a Vim/Awk/Python guy, but Smalltalk is quite beautiful in it's own way and images are really cool.

notduncansmith• 9 years ago

I love this site for quick syntax intros: https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/smalltalk/

Tepix2• 9 years ago

If you want to get into Pharo, there's a MOOC by France Université Numérique starting October 16th:

http://files.pharo.org/mooc/

louiscyphre6• 9 years ago

You gave the wrong URL. See https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/course-v1:inria+41010+sessio...

Tepix2• 9 years ago

"Wrong"? That URL is linked from the page I posted. Click on "France Université Numérique".

tempodox• 9 years ago

My beef with Smalltalk is that it's far too much a world onto itself for my taste. Java is already a bad enough citizen of Unix but Smalltalk takes it to a new level. If Lisp and Scheme can integrate well into Unix, why can't Smalltalk?

islanderfun• 9 years ago

Coming from a place of ignorance, how does Smalltalk not integrate?

tom_mellior5• 9 years ago

The default mode of interaction with Pharo and most other Smalltalk-based systems is not "launch an application which interacts on the console or opens some windows", but rather "launch Pharo, then inside the big Pharo window launch an application which interacts on the Pharo console or opens some windows inside the big Pharo window".

I think there are ways around this, but you may have to dig deep to find out how.

GNU Smalltalk is different: It doesn't have this traditional interaction mode. Many Smalltalk fans will probably find that that's a disadvantage.

naasking2• 9 years ago

A Smalltalk environment is practically its own operating system, complete with its own isolated UI/window manager, shells and desktop environment.

dangerbird2• 9 years ago

Smalltalk does not use text-based source files, with object source code saved as part of a binary vm image. Smalltalk is completely incomparable with unix editors, version control, and developer tools, relying instead on integrated dev tools inside the vm. Because all development and tools are inside a monolithic image, it's not very practical for writing shell scripts

steveeq1• 9 years ago

Try GNU smalltalk if you want it "integrated" into linux: http://smalltalk.gnu.org/

However, you completely miss the point of smalltalk by doing this.

pjmlp4• 9 years ago

Lisp and Scheme don't actually integrate with UNIX.

Their UNIX versions are handicapped versions of themselves.

Languages with rich runtimes and developer tooling are always shoehorned into POSIX model to "feel UNIX".

bad_login• 9 years ago

Could you explain?

jdboyd• 9 years ago

I get what you mean about that for Lisp (although, if I'm not mistaken, early LISPs were more like SBCL than Allegro or Symbolics in turns of user environment), but what Scheme version ever offered such a rich environment as the Lisp or Smalltalk examples mentioned above?

louiscyphre6• 9 years ago

Pharo, like GNU Smalltalk, has a command line mode so that you can use your favourite editor. However, without the live coding IDE, you lose the biggest benefit of the language: highly accelerated development and enormous programmer productivity.

Yes, Pharo (and Smalltalk) is a world unto itself but that's the price you pay for a highly productive, easy-to-program software development environment. How are you going to achieve this by retrofitting to an archaic methodology based on text files and over-engineered IDEs like Visual Studio and Eclipse? Java and C++ impose severe constraints and compromises in this respect.

At the end of the day, it's all about a programmer's ability to adapt to new methodologies. If they remain rigid and stick to old, familiar ways, there can be no great improvement in the way we create software.

tom_mellior5• 9 years ago

Pharo, like GNU Smalltalk, has a command line mode so that you can use your favourite editor.

That's good news that does not appear in official documentation (last time I checked).

Yes, Pharo (and Smalltalk) is a world unto itself but that's the price you pay for a highly productive, easy-to-program software development environment.

Users want standalone software. They don't want to be forced to run programs in your highly productive IDE. If your IDE is marketed to programmers as "a shiny IDE you will never be able to escape from", programmers won't use it for fear of not being able to deploy software in a way that users would accept.

remain rigid and stick to old, familiar ways

You know what has never ever worked for promoting programming languages? Insulting people who don't use your language.

igouy16• 9 years ago

To suit your tastes, not Pharo, but:

    "GNU Smalltalk -- The Smalltalk for those who can type" 

    http://smalltalk.gnu.org/

methehack3• 9 years ago

It can read files and talk to databases and make network connections etc... Are you just talking about using an editor on Unix files? iirc, the in IDE editor takes advantage of the meta-data in the compiled classes in order to provide a better editing experience that a file system approach could only replicate with a separate parser...

gnaritas12• 9 years ago

What you mean is, why can't you take everything that makes Smalltalk great away, and make it work like every other file based language. The answer is, because then it would suck.

flavio8111• 9 years ago

like every other file based language

As I mentioned above, Smalltalk is also file-based; when you distribute a smalltalk program source, you distribute a set of source text files.

Just like any other typical programming language.

z3t4• 9 years ago

They need to work on the presentation. How do you get started ? How does the code look like ? etc. Not just "download this program and buy this book"

dwringer• 9 years ago

FWIW the PDF of the book "Pharo By Example" is available for free. It has also been revised for version 5 - I tried using edition 1 with Pharo 4 and kept having to look up the new names for things, to the point where it was frustrating to try and follow. They appear to have put a lot of work into updating the guide.

igouy16• 9 years ago

And here it is!

http://files.pharo.org/books-pdfs/updated-pharo-by-example/2...

methehack3• 9 years ago

iirc correctly once you launch it after download there is a wealth of help w/in the (vastly superior to anything still even though it's literally 40 years old) IDE/workspace. It makes sense I think to do it there because then the documentation can be interactive

methehack3• 9 years ago

Also... http://pharo.org/documentation Too much to click on the "documentation" link in the header?

throwaway76457• 9 years ago

There is a profStef tutorial once you load the image. I think you just need to send "go" to the object.

Something like:

ProfStef go.

And right-click do after highlighting. Stefan Decasse is a French professor that does a lot for the project.

JohnStrange2• 9 years ago

Okay, so lot's of praise for a language. But I have three questions that aren't answered by the article:

1.) How fast are programs written in Pharao?

2.) Is it possible to write complete and halfway modern looking desktop end-consumer GUI applications in Pharao?

3.) How good is it at parallel programming (i.e. multicore support, not just concurrency with green threads)?

I'm always interested in learning a new language, if not just for fun. Currently my new language on the Todo list is Nim. However, I do not want to take a look at a language for which the answer to all of the above questions is "Meh".

pathsjs• 9 years ago

1) Last time I tried it was reasonably fast for a dynamic language - somewhat slower than javascript (V8) but faster than python (cpython) to give you a ballpark

2) Yes, but ou will not use native widgets. The way you write applications is: you write code by modifying the behaviour of objects in the Pharo application (which is your editor, debugger, GUI, version control system and so on), then you strip off the parts you don't need (such as what you used to write the application in the first place). Hence you will probably use the default Pharo widget system (take a look at some Pharo screenshots to get an idea)

3) Last time I checked it was planned, but there was nothing yet

JohnStrange2• 9 years ago

My current main language for my own projects is Racket, but there are performance issues with text% and the support for parallelism is not good enough. So I guess with this respect Pharao will not be a good alternative for me either.

However, I've looked at screenshots and the default widget system seems fairly reasonable. So I'll check it out anyway.

Thanks a lot for the replies, they were helpful!

flavio8111• 9 years ago

1) Last time I tried it was reasonably fast for a dynamic language - somewhat slower than javascript (V8) but faster than python (cpython) to give you a ballpark

If this is true, then it's much slower than LuaJIT, Lisp (SBCL) and probably Chez Scheme: Three great dynamic programming languages worth checking out, by the way.

dmzkrsk• 9 years ago

Any good article describing Smalltalk features for C/Python/Go/JS developer?

agentultra• 9 years ago

I like Pharo. I was able to build a widget that scraped the front page of HN in an afternoon with it just by following the built-in tutorial and googling.

One interesting "killer app" might be the Moose platform [0]. It's basically an interactive environment for the analysis of software. Writing a parser is rather straight-forward and turning the AST into a visualization is also quite easy. This sort of feels like how I imagine a good IDE should be.

[0] http://www.moosetechnology.org/

update spelling.

vbuwivbiu• 9 years ago

can confirm. My day job is coding in Clojure, which I love, but if I get a spare Sunday afternoon I'll do some coding in Pharo, playing with Roassal

thedaemon• 9 years ago

I'm sorry but the 3d image of the light house is horrible. It reminds me of POV-Ray renders from the 90s. Is Medium so poor that they can't afford a competent artist?

magnusdeus123• 9 years ago

Medium is just a platform for posting content. The image was selected by the author.

flavio8111• 9 years ago

Smalltalk has the cleanest, purest implementation of object-oriented concepts; not even Java, Ruby, nor CLOS can lay claim to that.

I'll take "powerful" versus "cleanest and purest" any day, thank you very much. Sorry but i'm staying with CLOS whenever i want to do object-oriented programming without feeling limited.

The author is on a pro-Smalltalk crusade (which I find just fine, Smalltalk is a great lang, and in a perfect world, it would be as popular as Javascript is today), but does so at the expense of constantly deriding Clojure, Common Lisp and Racket, which I find silly.

systems• 9 years ago

i would take "large ecosystem" over "powerful" or "cleanest and purest"

whenever i am in the process of picking a language for a project, i check if there is a library for what i want to do

SomeHacker442• 9 years ago

Every time I use Clojure for the nuts and bolts of software engineering it reminds me why I prefer Common Lisp.

Every time I need to get something done of any magnitude, it reminds me why I prefer Clojure to Common Lisp.

So... What "systems" said. Truly, Clojure is a Lisp for Getting Stuff Done, as it has access to an astounding number of libraries targeting the JVM, largely allowing you to focus on your product's core.

flavio8111• 9 years ago

Yes but on the other hand Smalltalk is an established language with a long history, i wouldn't be surprised if you are able to find all the libraries you need.

louiscyphre6• 9 years ago

Sorry, but the author has never derided Clojure and Racket. Common Lisp, yes, but not Clojure and Racket. He actually likes Scheme.

He has factually pointed out that most people are turned off by Lisp syntax. This is not an insult, simply a statement of fact.

paulajohnson• 9 years ago

I wouldn't take Capers Jones' estimates of SLOC/function point as evidence of anything. In most cases (including these two) this seems to be Jones taking a look at the language Wikipedia page and guessing a number.

igouy16• 9 years ago

this seems to be

This seems to be you maligning Capes Jones without evidence.

louiscyphre6• 9 years ago

Capers Jones is a well-respected expert in software metrics. He's done some ground-breaking work in this area. Unless you're an expert too, I wouldn't denigrate him.

stutonk• 9 years ago

For those wondering what it's like to program in Pharo or why there aren't a lot of code snippets floating around in Pharo materials: it's because the way you program in Pharo somewhat different than most languages. Pharo is an IDE in the true sense, i.e. while it's technically possible to open up a workspace (text editor) window and write a new class all on one screen this is not how things are done in practice.

Programming in Pharo is usually done either in the class browser or the debugger so that you're only ever seeing the code for one method (called a message in Pharo) at a time. Pharo and other Smalltalk variants tout simplicity of syntax but leave off the fairly complicated class hierarchy and message coupling semantics ergo the necessity for an extremely powerful browser. In the browser, messages for each class are further separated into 'protocols' such as methods for 'accessing' or 'initialization' (these are not part of the Smalltalk syntax, just a convenient layer of organization). At each level in the hierarchy, the Pharo code browser gives you a nice template to edit when you want to make a new package, class, or message. The overall effect is that you're only ever working with a handful of lines at a time and, indeed, Pharo will warn you if it thinks your message is too complex. Doing things this way actually makes everything quite manageable. One of the nice features of being pure OO is that everything is a pure black box so you just need to know that a class exists and take a peek at its interface to use it effectively.

To that end, Pharo actually has an excellent search tool that's not present in other Smalltalk variants like Squeak or Cuis. It does some kind of intelligent voodoo and can find anything from definitions to instantiated objects to senders and receivers of a certain message and so on. You can also open up a playground window to experiment with whatever code in the REPL style. But it's actually a little bit more robust than a traditional REPL because of the pure OO nature of Smalltalk. The thing you get back from evaluation isn't just some text. It's an object with all the associated possibility of reflection and manipulation (which can all be done from a UI, not just from evaluating more code).

One of the things Pharo does better than almost every other language is debugger integration. Pharo is like LISP in the sense that you can start an application, have it encounter an error (or just pause execution at will), drop into the debugger and change some stuff, reify whichever execution stack frame, then resume the program as if nothing ever happened. This is the essence of the other common Pharo workflow: write some partial code and then fill it in incrementally in the debugger until you have a fully functional and bug-free application. In addition, Pharo has its own robust unit testing system called Sunit that, coupled with the debugger workflow, creates a fantastically ergonomic TDD experience.

No matter where you are in the Pharo environment, Smalltalk code gets full treatment (E.G. syntax highlighting, code completion). So what does the syntax look like? Well, it actually has that concatenative elegance of Forth plus a few other constructs. Pretty much everything is a message send. Message sends come in three flavors: unary, binary, and keyword. Constructs like conditionals are also just message sends. In addition, there are first-class lambdas (called blocks in Smalltalk). Here's the canonical factorial program:

"Factorial function" fac := [ :n | (n = 0) ifTrue: 1 ifFalse: [ n * (fac value: (n - 1)) ] ].

where " ... " is a comment, ':=' is assignment, '[ ... ]' is a block, ':n' is the block's argument, arithmetic operators are actually binary message sends, things like 'ifTrue:' are keyword message sends (unary message sends are similar but don't have colons or parameters e.g. 'SomeObject new.'), and the statement is terminated with a period. Apparent recursion is fine because Smalltalk uses late binding. Aside from some syntax for strings and class declaration, that's basically it.

Pharo also has a lot of other nice features such as keeping a log of code changes in case of program crash or power outage, an integrated package manager/version control system, and optional git integration. It's all pretty easy to use and overall the system is quite impressive with a high degree of polish and decent performance (comes close to or exceeds node in my experience). However, as others have stated, it's a walled garden. All UI interaction happens within the Pharo environment with no option for native. If you want to break out on UNIX, you have write some kind of server and use sockets or the filesystem (which isn't a huge handicap in the grand scheme of things). On the other hand, application deployment is a little iffy. There's no readily apparent scheme to pare an image down to just what your project uses and then distribute that; users would have to install your package from within their own Pharo environment.

i_feel_great2• 9 years ago

This is the essence of the other common Pharo workflow: write some partial code and then fill it in incrementally in the debugger until you have a fully functional and bug-free application.

This way of developing, called by some as "Living in the Debugger", is strangely not promoted all that much by the Pharo community as far as I can see. It is quite astounding for productivity. In essence, you write some very high level code in a space, "do it", and Pharo will prompt you all the way for what it needs to make that high level code work. So you end up with code you need and no more. I have changed my whole thinking about writing software according to this pattern, even when writing in other languages (Guile, Erlang, Ada, Lua...). My Pharo remains my favourite.

Koshkin• 9 years ago

To an inexperienced eye, Smalltalk's syntax seems to be suffering from colon "cancer". (I don't get a similar feeling from Lisp, for some reason.)

claystu• 9 years ago

How do you get started with GUI programming? I can't seem to find anything on this for Pharo6...and barely anything for earlier versions (which I'm assuming are now obsolete).

scroot3• 9 years ago

Spec [1] is one way. You can also find a list of books on the Pharo website [2].

[1] http://files.pharo.org/books/spec-tutorial/ [2] http://books.pharo.org

keithnz• 9 years ago

Is Pharo open source?

dragonwriter3• 9 years ago

Yes. MIT license.

ScottBurson3• 9 years ago

Smalltalk’s use of live coding is easy and elegant; not even Common Lisp, Forth, nor Java (hot swapping) can lay claim to that.

Does anyone understand what this is talking about? I may not understand exactly what is meant by "live coding", but I think I do it in Common Lisp (via SLIME) all the time. How is it better in Smalltalk?

coliveira• 9 years ago

This is certainly an exaggeration, but I think they are referring to the integration between the language and UI elements, which can be easily changed live. The difference is that the Smalltalk UI was designed so that you can swap the code behind it during a development session and save the result in an image file, while other toolkits use a more traditional build-and-display approach.

i_feel_great2• 9 years ago

In Smalltalk, you can pause your application and inspect the objects alive in a stack at the time you paused it, go backwards and forwards in the stack, change them to see an alternative future, make changes and resume. It is the weirdest shit.

ScottBurson3• 9 years ago

Common Lisp implementations admittedly vary in how well they support interacting with the stack in this way, but some of them do it just fine, as did the Lisp Machines. (The Lisp Machine developers were heavily influenced by Smalltalk, so I'm not saying Smalltalk doesn't deserve credit for the innovation; I'm just wondering what I'm missing, if anything, by using CL today.)

igouy16• 9 years ago

And because it's been around for decades, people figure out how create something like that functionality for other languages:

JavaScript Time-Travel Debugger

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/javascript-...

https://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/Marron/Time-Travel-Debugging...

vanderZwan4• 9 years ago

I enjoyed playing around with Pharo a few years back, and often look at what else the people working on it have been thinking of lately.

Having said that, the PharoJS website mentioned in the article could use some love, I just get an unstyled webpage[0]. Now, I love avoiding website bloat as much as the next guy, but from the point of view of a web developer who might be interested in exploring what Pharo and Smalltalk in general might have to offer, that seems a bit too minimal.

Amber, by comparison, runs a full SmallTalk on the website itself, which is pretty cool[1]. Doesn't seem to have maintained momentum beyond 2014 though.

[0] https://pharojs.github.io/

[1] http://www.amber-lang.net/index.html

scroot3• 9 years ago

FYI for anyone reading / interested: Amber is apparently still under active development, but they moved from Github to a self hosted platform [1]. Last code update was 3 days ago.

[1] https://lolg.it/amber/amber

vanderZwan4• 9 years ago

Oh, that's good! But the website and documentation is pretty outdated then. I guess all current development goes into code?

jmarinez• 9 years ago

*ACM, want to see how bad things are, read this thread....

To understand Smalltalk in general one neeeds to understand the impetus; and behind it is Alan Kay. What we do today isn’t really “computing” as envisioned and then created in the 70s. Lots of those terms used back then are used now, but the meaning has been transformed into something entirely different.

It’s unfortunate that most of the things we call “state of the art” are bastardized and horrible versions of those from the 60s and 70s. Yet here we are in 2017 and we can’t have the majority of “computer users” create an essay defending his/her views on climate change with an actual editable running model upon which a civil discussion could be based on. But hey, we will have an iPhone X, so who cares?

Smalltalk is like a gem, a remnant from a magical world that existed and went away - but still possible - if we just took a look way, way back as to where it all originated.

For the CS students out there, get your money’s worth and start asking where all this stuff we have now came from and more importantly, why.

Here’s a good start:

A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages: https://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html “The basic idea is to exploit the duality between functions and tables (or processes and memory). English has nouns which refer to "objects", and verbs which refer to "actors" and "relators". This is a Newtonian epistemology. Modern physics and philosophy tend towards the idea that both "objects" and "actors" are just different aspects of the notion of process. A process has state (a set of relations having only to do with it) which changes as time (defined as interactions with other objects) passes. Using this view "data" is a process which changes "slowly", "function" is a process which changes more rapidly. Each process has the logical attributes of a complete "micro" computer: they can have inputs, give back outputs, act as a memory on file system, perform computations, be interrupted, etc. Since a "computer" can simulate all other computers (modulo time and space), having the notion of a process in a language allows useful idea such as arrays, records, recursive procedures, etc., to be added to the the repertoire at any time.”

t420mom• 9 years ago

My personal experience has been that the live coding aspect makes a huge difference to my development speed. A while ago I was going through Project Euler in less-mainstream languages, just as a warm-up/distraction from work. I would do one problem at a time and then go back to work. One day I switched from Object Pascal (with Lazarus) to Pharo. I completed the problem (which I hadn't attempted before, so no prior knowledge) so quickly, that I proceeded to complete five problems in the time it usually took me to do one. Because everything was so immediate, it was really easy to maintain a flow state. I had to force myself to stop and get back to work.

The object inspector is really nice, also being able to redefine methods in the debugger and continue the current computation is super cool. Beats poring over Java stack traces.

It would be nice if there were more open source libraries available, but SmalltalkHub is getting better: http://smalltalkhub.com/list

Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk

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