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Kenneth Eng writes only about smalltalk... Despite promising directions like Amber ST, somehow smalltalk has failed to reach critical mass, and that's a shame.

by nunb 8y ago

Kenneth Eng writes only about smalltalk... Despite promising directions like Amber ST, somehow smalltalk has failed to reach critical mass, and that's a shame. My feeling is that something about their approach promotes learning by showing rather than reading and that has limited the uptake. Most successful proponents move on... Avi Bryant and Ramon Leon and perhaps Mark Watson. I've had email exchanges with almost all these folks and overall the feeling is that it was a great environment whose time has passed. I think the Forth guy Don Hopkins is also a fan as is perhaps Joe Armstrong of Erlang fame. And of course HN loves Alan Kay.

mark_l_watson 8y ago
Since you mentioned me, here is my take: I would spend more time using Pharo but it often takes to much time getting things running. It happens too often that I will see a project mentioned in Pharo News, want to try it, and then have to spend too much time getting it running. There are advantages and disadvantages to image development and I usually don’t even take advantage of image based development in SBCL Common Lisp anymore: I usually have a load file to fetch data I will need and load in my code and required libraries. In the same way, I no longer keep multiple Pharo images around. That said, it is a large world and you don’t need too many companies and individuals using a software technology to keep the ecosystem supported and moving forward. I was also a big fan of my Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine, but that was mostly viable because Xerox had one large customer, the CIA. The CIA had a custom work environment for analysts that took advantage of the platform. In a similar way, I can see Pharo as potentially being an integration tool for knowledge workers with interfaces to external tools like MatplotLib and TensorFlow. A highly customized Pharo environment could be effective for organizations that could support a small team maintaining a custom analysis setup.

by nunb 8y ago

mark_l_watson 8y ago

Since you mentioned me, here is my take: I would spend more time using Pharo but it often takes to much time getting things running. It happens too often that I will see a project mentioned in Pharo News, want to try it, and then have to spend too much time getting it running. There are advantages and disadvantages to image development and I usually don’t even take advantage of image based development in SBCL Common Lisp anymore: I usually have a load file to fetch data I will need and load in my code and required libraries. In the same way, I no longer keep multiple Pharo images around. That said, it is a large world and you don’t need too many companies and individuals using a software technology to keep the ecosystem supported and moving forward. I was also a big fan of my Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine, but that was mostly viable because Xerox had one large customer, the CIA. The CIA had a custom work environment for analysts that took advantage of the platform. In a similar way, I can see Pharo as potentially being an integration tool for knowledge workers with interfaces to external tools like MatplotLib and TensorFlow. A highly customized Pharo environment could be effective for organizations that could support a small team maintaining a custom analysis setup.