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Smalltalk is one of those things I want to learn, but resources seem sparse and everyone seems to be pushing their own particular flavor of Smalltalk. Do I go w

Smalltalk is one of those things I want to learn, but resources seem sparse and everyone seems to be pushing their own particular flavor of Smalltalk. Do I go with Amber Smalltalk? Squeak? Pharo? Are they all sufficiently similar that I can move from one to the other without re-learning everything? I'm honestly considering just going through the GNU Smalltalk manual on the terminal and worrying about all the graphical VM's later.

cmiles74 8y ago
I would go with Pharo if you are interested in what the Smalltalk that is referenced in the article was like. Pharo has a modern and friendly look, it's also providing the GUI environment and integrated tools that (in my opinion) seem in line with the original goals of the Smalltalk project. If your interest is more in Smalltalk the language, I think that using GNU Smalltalk in the terminal is certainly reasonable.
arnsholt 8y ago
I'd just go with Pharo. Pharo by Example is a good intro book, and it's still under development. Also, I would strongly suggest that you go with something like Pharo where you run the image on your desktop. Part of the reason I really, really like Smalltalk is how working in the image changes your workflow. As I understand it, GNU Smalltalk is still write file-compile-run, which is not at all how you work in Smalltalk (or at least not I or my colleagues do), instead I find that Smalltalk encourages a very iterative style since you're generally working directly on a running instance of your program. It takes a bit of getting used to the development environment in the image (and setting breakpoints by inserting `self halt` directly into a method feels really dirty initially), but now that I've been working in Smalltalk for a while I find I prefer it to "normal" development, which is still very much "hand in your stack of punch cards and wait for the result to come back"-way of development.
agumonkey 8y ago
there is a pharo mooc http://mooc.pharo.org/ http://mooc.pharo.org/ I took it some few years ago, it was great to get a feel of the lifestyle, and ST deserves all the praises. It's tangible dynamic visual repl, the object system is sensible and human (unlike java). They have creative and interesting ways to make software (the web engine felt super low on boilerplate).

cmiles74 8y ago

I would go with Pharo if you are interested in what the Smalltalk that is referenced in the article was like. Pharo has a modern and friendly look, it's also providing the GUI environment and integrated tools that (in my opinion) seem in line with the original goals of the Smalltalk project. If your interest is more in Smalltalk the language, I think that using GNU Smalltalk in the terminal is certainly reasonable.

arnsholt 8y ago

I'd just go with Pharo. Pharo by Example is a good intro book, and it's still under development. Also, I would strongly suggest that you go with something like Pharo where you run the image on your desktop. Part of the reason I really, really like Smalltalk is how working in the image changes your workflow. As I understand it, GNU Smalltalk is still write file-compile-run, which is not at all how you work in Smalltalk (or at least not I or my colleagues do), instead I find that Smalltalk encourages a very iterative style since you're generally working directly on a running instance of your program. It takes a bit of getting used to the development environment in the image (and setting breakpoints by inserting `self halt` directly into a method feels really dirty initially), but now that I've been working in Smalltalk for a while I find I prefer it to "normal" development, which is still very much "hand in your stack of punch cards and wait for the result to come back"-way of development.

agumonkey 8y ago

there is a pharo mooc http://mooc.pharo.org/ http://mooc.pharo.org/ I took it some few years ago, it was great to get a feel of the lifestyle, and ST deserves all the praises. It's tangible dynamic visual repl, the object system is sensible and human (unlike java). They have creative and interesting ways to make software (the web engine felt super low on boilerplate).