12 ms·

"Everything's an object" is object oriented programming done right and I can see why Ruby and other languages used those ideas from Smalltalk. I couldn't unders

"Everything's an object" is object oriented programming done right and I can see why Ruby and other languages used those ideas from Smalltalk. I couldn't understand the fascination with the integrated environments though. It was my biggest stumbling block. Is there a pathway to use Pharo with my traditional tools?

Tomte 8y ago
If you want Smalltalk without the image, GNU Smalltalk is probably your best bet.
infinite8s 8y ago
It's more than "everything is an object", though. It's "everything is a live object", which is why you need the entire integrated environment with it.
- pavlov 8y ago
  Yes, that's the real point of Smalltalk. I'm incredibly frustrated by environments like Ruby on Rails which pay lip service to the idea of "everything is an object" — but those objects are just a cesspool of hollow non-evolving throwaways that get built up and torn down on every request. It's the difference between a castle made out of toy blocks and the Buckingham Palace.
- dmux 8y ago
  The liveness of the environment is really stellar. Other languages have REPLs, but once you've entered your code, it gets compiled and saved in some internal format. In most languages I've tried, there's been no way to retrieve the originally written code. That's possible with Smalltalk.
- krylon 8y ago
  That was a real eye-opener for me. In most languages (Java, C#, ...) the standard library is like a mountain range - you can climb it, but you cannot change or move it. In Smalltalk, it is like a living room, where I change or move the furniture around as I please.
vvillena 8y ago
You can use source code control to keep yourself outside the environment, but I don't know if it's worth it. The Smalltalk environments allow for unique workflows, and that's a lot of the appeal Smalltalk has.
klez 8y ago
No, but you can use something like GNU Smalltalk (http://smalltalk.gnu.org/ http://smalltalk.gnu.org/). But part of the allure of Smalltalk is the environment, not the language.
coldtea 8y ago
>I couldn't understand the fascination with the integrated environments though That's one of the key benefits: the environment is an object too. First class IDE knowledge about your objects (Smalltalk pioneered automatic refactorings etc), the ability to modify it as you like, hot code reload, re-startable apps, "live" images to send for debug, etc.
- thekingofh 8y ago
  It feels like an alien world moving into the Smalltalk live environments and the patterns I've built up over the years and tools like Vim, etc are indispensable when it comes to moving around and modifying code. Of all the reading I've done on it, the entirety of the language is contained inside images. I know that the Pharo guys have engineered this marvel, and I think it's on the verge of a breakthrough with a lot of people if they can ease into it somehow.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Small pedatic correction, Xerox PARC guys have engineered this marvel for Lisp, Smalltalk and Mesa (later Mesa/Cedar). This work was the genesis of IDEs.
  - d-mason 8y ago
    It is an alien world.... but a better one by most measures. I come from Emacs (20+ years when I first encountered the Smalltalk IDE), and find aspects of code editing irritating sometimes, but the overall value of the IDE more than pays for that irritation. One of the coolest things is TDD carried to an extreme level. I build my test, and it fails because there's no such method, so I get a debug window and tell it to create the method... then I fill in the contents and click proceed... and picks up where it left off! It either works, or I'm back in a debug window fixing what failed. Total time from thinking of a test to working code, often less than 5-10 minutes.
    - ben-coman 8y ago
      Here is an example of Pharo style TDD.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuZyOKa91o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuZyOKa91o
klibertp 8y ago
You certainly can use Pharo with normal tools. You just write (and version, and whatever else) your code normally in files, then you "file in", or load, those in Pharo. You'd need ~3 lines of a wrapper if you don't want to do it manually. I share your concerns, actually - the truth is, the code editing part of Pharo is its least compelling feature and just cannot compare to my Emacs setup with years of tweaking behind it - and I tried working outside of Pharo at one point. The main problem with that was the loss of many features of Pharo IDE: autocompletion, go to definition, who calls a method, refactoring support, unit test support, debugger (it's magic, really), eval anything anywhere and more. In the end, I decided that it's not worth it to insist on using my normal tools and learned to use Pharo as a whole (although text editing still sucks, which can explain why the average length of a method tends to be so low in Smalltalks...)
- DennisP 8y ago
  Considering how many editors have Vim emulators now, it's a little surprising nobody's done it for smalltalk yet.
  - thekingofh 8y ago
    I've yet to use a Vim emulator that worked as well as Vim though. The amount of features in it are mind boggling and replicating that would be the work of a large fully funded team.
    - DennisP 8y ago
      Even so, lots of people find emulators useful, especially in the context of an IDE that brings its own compelling features to the table. For years I used a commercial emulator in Visual Studio that was a huge boost to my productivity. It was the work of a sole developer. And smalltalk does bring a lot of compelling features, as others here have noted. (And some emulators are quite good, like evil-mode, which has converted some hard-core vimmers. Which also makes me wonder about implementing the core of emacs in smalltalk, making similar functions available, and extending it with smalltalk instead of elisp.)
  - 8y ago
ben-coman 8y ago
Pharo is making some moves in this direction with: * the CI first bootstrapping a non-GUI image as a separate artifact prior to loading the GUI and IDE into the release product. * good progress on stripping graphical elements out of the VM so it could be embedded in other systems (e.g. as a game scripting engine). * using git to manage sources. * some community `vi` keyboard bindings (I haven't tried) But still there is not yet an easy access to use separate tools. The benefit of using Pharo IDE is being able to mold your tools... http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/the-moldable-gtinspector-deconstructed http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/the-moldable-gtinspect...
agumonkey 8y ago
You don't like having a system fully built in one language / paradigm ? It felt very exciting and relaxing to me. But to each his own.
- thekingofh 8y ago
  POSIX is similar to what you describe. It's a unified paradigm that wrestles the complexities under one paradigm. UNIX philosophy of each tool doing one thing, and doing it well, combined with the constructs that are provided through shells such as inter-process communication and piping everything has turned out to be quite the solid foundation for software development. I'm not saying we couldn't learn lessons from Pharo, but that I'm not so quick to dump everything else to live inside their bubble just yet.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Ok, I won't speak out of my bottom, but from the few that I knew, POSIX used to be a minuscule incarnation of this[1]. But I don't think it's 5% of smalltalk live environment: - file metaphore is limited, object are marginally better - dynamic language instead of edit/compile/run - infinitely more humane than C/sed/m4/awk/perl hybrid interactions [1] There's a unix book about how to see it as an IDE, I do believe that long ago, BSD era, things were smaller, cleaner and better integrated. But I still hold my point
gambler 8y ago
>I couldn't understand the fascination with the integrated environments though. The only thing I can recommend it watching some Alan Kay videos or Pharo demos. Windows and Linux UI conditioned everyone to think of UI as a crutch for incompetent users, rather than a tool useful in its own right. This cannot be undone in a single reply, no matter how elaborate it will be. Traditional tools are definitely more polished at the moment, but they are exactly that - traditional, shaped by historic accidents, rather than design. Software development is currently running on a set of highly refined steam engines. For example, what are the chances that a simulation of a teletype is the best interface for interacting with an operating system? What are the chances that the best conceptual model for a unit of information is manila folder or a phone book ("files", "directories"). Also, IDE came to mean "bloated monolith for editing and compiling code". But it should really mean that application interface is the development tool. Tools that are integrated into OS and applications.
- tudelo 8y ago
  Any good Pharo demos that you can recommend?
  - scroot 8y ago
    Gtoolkit [1] is a cutting-edge example of what's possible. I say "cutting edge" because it relies upon a dev version of Bloc, which is the new graphics system being developed for future versions of Pharo. Any sluggishness you experience with Gtoolkit, by the way, is because Bloc is being hosted in Morphic (the current graphics system) temporarily. [1] http://gtoolkit.com http://gtoolkit.com
  - gambler 8y ago
    Depends on how much you know about SmallTalk. Here is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baxtyeFVn3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baxtyeFVn3w
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

Tomte 8y ago

If you want Smalltalk without the image, GNU Smalltalk is probably your best bet.

infinite8s 8y ago

It's more than "everything is an object", though. It's "everything is a live object", which is why you need the entire integrated environment with it.

pavlov 8y ago
Yes, that's the real point of Smalltalk. I'm incredibly frustrated by environments like Ruby on Rails which pay lip service to the idea of "everything is an object" — but those objects are just a cesspool of hollow non-evolving throwaways that get built up and torn down on every request. It's the difference between a castle made out of toy blocks and the Buckingham Palace.
dmux 8y ago
The liveness of the environment is really stellar. Other languages have REPLs, but once you've entered your code, it gets compiled and saved in some internal format. In most languages I've tried, there's been no way to retrieve the originally written code. That's possible with Smalltalk.
krylon 8y ago
That was a real eye-opener for me. In most languages (Java, C#, ...) the standard library is like a mountain range - you can climb it, but you cannot change or move it. In Smalltalk, it is like a living room, where I change or move the furniture around as I please.

vvillena 8y ago

You can use source code control to keep yourself outside the environment, but I don't know if it's worth it. The Smalltalk environments allow for unique workflows, and that's a lot of the appeal Smalltalk has.

klez 8y ago

No, but you can use something like GNU Smalltalk (http://smalltalk.gnu.org/ http://smalltalk.gnu.org/). But part of the allure of Smalltalk is the environment, not the language.

coldtea 8y ago

>I couldn't understand the fascination with the integrated environments though That's one of the key benefits: the environment is an object too. First class IDE knowledge about your objects (Smalltalk pioneered automatic refactorings etc), the ability to modify it as you like, hot code reload, re-startable apps, "live" images to send for debug, etc.

thekingofh 8y ago
It feels like an alien world moving into the Smalltalk live environments and the patterns I've built up over the years and tools like Vim, etc are indispensable when it comes to moving around and modifying code. Of all the reading I've done on it, the entirety of the language is contained inside images. I know that the Pharo guys have engineered this marvel, and I think it's on the verge of a breakthrough with a lot of people if they can ease into it somehow.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Small pedatic correction, Xerox PARC guys have engineered this marvel for Lisp, Smalltalk and Mesa (later Mesa/Cedar). This work was the genesis of IDEs.
- d-mason 8y ago
  It is an alien world.... but a better one by most measures. I come from Emacs (20+ years when I first encountered the Smalltalk IDE), and find aspects of code editing irritating sometimes, but the overall value of the IDE more than pays for that irritation. One of the coolest things is TDD carried to an extreme level. I build my test, and it fails because there's no such method, so I get a debug window and tell it to create the method... then I fill in the contents and click proceed... and picks up where it left off! It either works, or I'm back in a debug window fixing what failed. Total time from thinking of a test to working code, often less than 5-10 minutes.
  - ben-coman 8y ago
    Here is an example of Pharo style TDD.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuZyOKa91o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuZyOKa91o

klibertp 8y ago

You certainly can use Pharo with normal tools. You just write (and version, and whatever else) your code normally in files, then you "file in", or load, those in Pharo. You'd need ~3 lines of a wrapper if you don't want to do it manually. I share your concerns, actually - the truth is, the code editing part of Pharo is its least compelling feature and just cannot compare to my Emacs setup with years of tweaking behind it - and I tried working outside of Pharo at one point. The main problem with that was the loss of many features of Pharo IDE: autocompletion, go to definition, who calls a method, refactoring support, unit test support, debugger (it's magic, really), eval anything anywhere and more. In the end, I decided that it's not worth it to insist on using my normal tools and learned to use Pharo as a whole (although text editing still sucks, which can explain why the average length of a method tends to be so low in Smalltalks...)

DennisP 8y ago
Considering how many editors have Vim emulators now, it's a little surprising nobody's done it for smalltalk yet.
- thekingofh 8y ago
  I've yet to use a Vim emulator that worked as well as Vim though. The amount of features in it are mind boggling and replicating that would be the work of a large fully funded team.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    Even so, lots of people find emulators useful, especially in the context of an IDE that brings its own compelling features to the table. For years I used a commercial emulator in Visual Studio that was a huge boost to my productivity. It was the work of a sole developer. And smalltalk does bring a lot of compelling features, as others here have noted. (And some emulators are quite good, like evil-mode, which has converted some hard-core vimmers. Which also makes me wonder about implementing the core of emacs in smalltalk, making similar functions available, and extending it with smalltalk instead of elisp.)
- 8y ago

ben-coman 8y ago

Pharo is making some moves in this direction with: * the CI first bootstrapping a non-GUI image as a separate artifact prior to loading the GUI and IDE into the release product. * good progress on stripping graphical elements out of the VM so it could be embedded in other systems (e.g. as a game scripting engine). * using git to manage sources. * some community `vi` keyboard bindings (I haven't tried) But still there is not yet an easy access to use separate tools. The benefit of using Pharo IDE is being able to mold your tools... http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/the-moldable-gtinspector-deconstructed http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/the-moldable-gtinspect...

agumonkey 8y ago

You don't like having a system fully built in one language / paradigm ? It felt very exciting and relaxing to me. But to each his own.

thekingofh 8y ago
POSIX is similar to what you describe. It's a unified paradigm that wrestles the complexities under one paradigm. UNIX philosophy of each tool doing one thing, and doing it well, combined with the constructs that are provided through shells such as inter-process communication and piping everything has turned out to be quite the solid foundation for software development. I'm not saying we couldn't learn lessons from Pharo, but that I'm not so quick to dump everything else to live inside their bubble just yet.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Ok, I won't speak out of my bottom, but from the few that I knew, POSIX used to be a minuscule incarnation of this[1]. But I don't think it's 5% of smalltalk live environment: - file metaphore is limited, object are marginally better - dynamic language instead of edit/compile/run - infinitely more humane than C/sed/m4/awk/perl hybrid interactions [1] There's a unix book about how to see it as an IDE, I do believe that long ago, BSD era, things were smaller, cleaner and better integrated. But I still hold my point

gambler 8y ago

>I couldn't understand the fascination with the integrated environments though. The only thing I can recommend it watching some Alan Kay videos or Pharo demos. Windows and Linux UI conditioned everyone to think of UI as a crutch for incompetent users, rather than a tool useful in its own right. This cannot be undone in a single reply, no matter how elaborate it will be. Traditional tools are definitely more polished at the moment, but they are exactly that - traditional, shaped by historic accidents, rather than design. Software development is currently running on a set of highly refined steam engines. For example, what are the chances that a simulation of a teletype is the best interface for interacting with an operating system? What are the chances that the best conceptual model for a unit of information is manila folder or a phone book ("files", "directories"). Also, IDE came to mean "bloated monolith for editing and compiling code". But it should really mean that application interface is the development tool. Tools that are integrated into OS and applications.

tudelo 8y ago
Any good Pharo demos that you can recommend?
- scroot 8y ago
  Gtoolkit [1] is a cutting-edge example of what's possible. I say "cutting edge" because it relies upon a dev version of Bloc, which is the new graphics system being developed for future versions of Pharo. Any sluggishness you experience with Gtoolkit, by the way, is because Bloc is being hosted in Morphic (the current graphics system) temporarily. [1] http://gtoolkit.com http://gtoolkit.com
- gambler 8y ago
  Depends on how much you know about SmallTalk. Here is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baxtyeFVn3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baxtyeFVn3w
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]