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>GNU Smalltalk turned out to be the perfect dialect for this first contact with Smalltalk, offering a very traditional command-line experience. And Vim provided

>GNU Smalltalk turned out to be the perfect dialect for this first contact with Smalltalk, offering a very traditional command-line experience. And Vim provided the syntax highlighting I needed to write those initial lines of code. Sorry, but if you're using VIM and command line, you're missing all of the best parts of Smalltalk. It's like trying to learn HTML/CSS by designing web pages in Word. If you want to see what the fuss is really all about, you should download a standalone Pharo VM and latest stable image: https://pharo.org/download https://pharo.org/download It instantly gives you everything you need to learn and develop things with a modern IDE. It has Playground (better REPL), the famed debugger, the code explorer and a bunch of other things. Then listen to MOOC: http://mooc.pharo.org/ http://mooc.pharo.org/ Then buy The Blue Book on Ebay (Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation). Absolutely worth it. Yes, even now. Yes, even if you don't plan to use SmallTalk. If you need help, join Pharo Discord or use the mailing list.

sigzero 6y ago
Agreed. GNU Smalltalk is a non-starter for me. It is not a standard Smalltak environment.
andrewg 6y ago
Early in my career I wrote Smalltalk in a GUI-based environment (VisualWorks/GemStone), with the browser, debugger, transcript, etc. It was an incredible experience. Later, I used Common Lisp with SLIME and had a very similar experience, at least as productive, except that I was using my preferred IDE (Emacs) and saved the code to normal files so I could use more common tools like grep, SVN/Git, etc. I still built code into an image, which I could update live via the REPL. I haven't used GNU Smalltalk personally, but I do like the idea of a Smalltalk that's less of an island, particularly if that makes it more palatable to a new generation of programmers.
pmoriarty 6y ago
For a Lisp/Scheme fan who's very on the fence about giving Smalltalk a try, could someone explain in words what all the fuss is about?
- gambler 6y ago
  https://pharo.org/features https://pharo.org/features
- lacrimacida 6y ago
  https://pharo.org/success https://pharo.org/success

sigzero 6y ago

Agreed. GNU Smalltalk is a non-starter for me. It is not a standard Smalltak environment.

andrewg 6y ago

Early in my career I wrote Smalltalk in a GUI-based environment (VisualWorks/GemStone), with the browser, debugger, transcript, etc. It was an incredible experience. Later, I used Common Lisp with SLIME and had a very similar experience, at least as productive, except that I was using my preferred IDE (Emacs) and saved the code to normal files so I could use more common tools like grep, SVN/Git, etc. I still built code into an image, which I could update live via the REPL. I haven't used GNU Smalltalk personally, but I do like the idea of a Smalltalk that's less of an island, particularly if that makes it more palatable to a new generation of programmers.

pmoriarty 6y ago

For a Lisp/Scheme fan who's very on the fence about giving Smalltalk a try, could someone explain in words what all the fuss is about?

gambler 6y ago
https://pharo.org/features https://pharo.org/features
lacrimacida 6y ago
https://pharo.org/success https://pharo.org/success