4 ms·

Who's using Pharo in production? Every time Smalltalk comes up, it's almost like it's this Loch Ness monster that everyone claims to be enamored with but doesn'

Who's using Pharo in production? Every time Smalltalk comes up, it's almost like it's this Loch Ness monster that everyone claims to be enamored with but doesn't actually exist. I want to love Pharo so much, I just can't think of a single thing it would be useful for.

andrewl 5y ago
I’ve heard there’s a lot of Smalltalk (not necessarily Pharo) used on Wall Street. There’s a fairly extensive page listing companies who use Pharo at: https://pharo.org/success.html https://pharo.org/success.html
butterisgood 5y ago
Why does knowing who else is using something have any impact on your ability to love it? Sounds like it's just a motivation problem perhaps? For example, I make use of Plan 9 daily, and I don't really give a whip if anyone else thinks it's worth anything at all. I also use Emacs lisp in pretty strange ways (automating workflows by cross-querying REST services in ways I used to do by hand). I've even demonstrated it for coworkers, and I think some of them may be using the same techniques, but I'm not sure, and I don't care. If they have questions about it, I'll answer them. If not, they can say "that guy's weird", and I'm totally fine with that. Outnerd the nerds I say! Let your freak flag fly! In all seriousness I encourage people to write some code. Play around! Share your experiences. It's good for you and everyone else to foster new ideas and be innovative. It's especially good if the technology in question is surrounded by a welcoming community. It provides an additional sense of belonging to something, and who knows you might just actually enjoy yourself! You've got the first spark of curiosity, now you've just got to stoke the flames, or not!
- scotty79 5y ago
  > Why does knowing who else is using something have any impact on your ability to love it? It's easier to learn to love something if you see how other people love it.
- ramesh31 5y ago
  >Why does knowing who else is using something have any impact on your ability to love it? Sounds like it's just a motivation problem perhaps? Not making a value judgement. I agree that it doesn't need any more reason to exist than for its own sake. But I'm just genuinely curious what advantages Pharo has that make it useful in a professional setting.
  - rscho 5y ago
    > what advantages Pharo has that make it useful in a professional setting. Pretty much, the ultimate quick-and-dirty prototyping engine, especially for GUI projects. In the sense that you're prototyping largely from scratch, not cobbling myriads of huge libs. So, ball of mud. Not brick wall.
    - igouy 5y ago
      Sculpting clay. Funny thing. Back-in-the-day Smalltalks were attractive because the source code was included to be studied and re-used (When that wasn't true of many other development tools).
Kototama 5y ago
Please don't let the hacker in hackernews fads away. We need alternative technologies. These alternatives should not be judged on one singe metric.
- tormeh 5y ago
  HN is owned by Y Combinator. It's at least as much a tech finance/industry board as a pure tech board.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  Hacker News has become mainstream. Which means leet code grind with Java Python or JavaScript. The hackers are still here. But they are just a minority.
sebastianconcpt 5y ago
Telna [1] is using Pharo to resolve roaming for an incredible amount of daily network traffic. I'm in their dev team. Here you have may others using it in production: https://pharo.org/success.html https://pharo.org/success.html [1] https://www.telna.com https://www.telna.com
- igouy 5y ago
  Curious -- Why not Erlang?
  - sebastianconcpt 5y ago
    The GTP client that touches Pharo is done in Erlang.
    - igouy 5y ago
      So Pharo for the front-end?
      - sebastianconcpt 5y ago
        Pharo runs in the backend for resolving roaming for SS7, GTP and DIAMETER. It orchestrates a lot in there in order to provide Network Virtualization [1] [1] https://www.telna.com/blog/why-virtualization-is-critical-to-mobile-networks https://www.telna.com/blog/why-virtualization-is-critical-to...
- theamk 5y ago
  This is super interesting! Do you have more information about this? - How many developers are working on that codebase simultaneously? - What is your workflow like? Do you have any sort of CI system? How does it work? - How does your deployment works? Is it a single beefy machine or a fleet of smaller ones? - What kind of network protocols do you use? Any code generation? - How do you deal with errors -- are there equivalents of "coredumps" or "logs" in the Pharo world?
agumonkey 5y ago
around 2009 there were a few websites running on pharo object db IIRC
igouy 5y ago
> I just can't think of a single thing it would be useful for. Have you wanted to love Pharo enough to install and use it?

andrewl 5y ago

I’ve heard there’s a lot of Smalltalk (not necessarily Pharo) used on Wall Street. There’s a fairly extensive page listing companies who use Pharo at: https://pharo.org/success.html https://pharo.org/success.html

butterisgood 5y ago

Why does knowing who else is using something have any impact on your ability to love it? Sounds like it's just a motivation problem perhaps? For example, I make use of Plan 9 daily, and I don't really give a whip if anyone else thinks it's worth anything at all. I also use Emacs lisp in pretty strange ways (automating workflows by cross-querying REST services in ways I used to do by hand). I've even demonstrated it for coworkers, and I think some of them may be using the same techniques, but I'm not sure, and I don't care. If they have questions about it, I'll answer them. If not, they can say "that guy's weird", and I'm totally fine with that. Outnerd the nerds I say! Let your freak flag fly! In all seriousness I encourage people to write some code. Play around! Share your experiences. It's good for you and everyone else to foster new ideas and be innovative. It's especially good if the technology in question is surrounded by a welcoming community. It provides an additional sense of belonging to something, and who knows you might just actually enjoy yourself! You've got the first spark of curiosity, now you've just got to stoke the flames, or not!

scotty79 5y ago
> Why does knowing who else is using something have any impact on your ability to love it? It's easier to learn to love something if you see how other people love it.
ramesh31 5y ago
>Why does knowing who else is using something have any impact on your ability to love it? Sounds like it's just a motivation problem perhaps? Not making a value judgement. I agree that it doesn't need any more reason to exist than for its own sake. But I'm just genuinely curious what advantages Pharo has that make it useful in a professional setting.
- rscho 5y ago
  > what advantages Pharo has that make it useful in a professional setting. Pretty much, the ultimate quick-and-dirty prototyping engine, especially for GUI projects. In the sense that you're prototyping largely from scratch, not cobbling myriads of huge libs. So, ball of mud. Not brick wall.
  - igouy 5y ago
    Sculpting clay. Funny thing. Back-in-the-day Smalltalks were attractive because the source code was included to be studied and re-used (When that wasn't true of many other development tools).

Kototama 5y ago

Please don't let the hacker in hackernews fads away. We need alternative technologies. These alternatives should not be judged on one singe metric.

tormeh 5y ago
HN is owned by Y Combinator. It's at least as much a tech finance/industry board as a pure tech board.
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
Hacker News has become mainstream. Which means leet code grind with Java Python or JavaScript. The hackers are still here. But they are just a minority.

sebastianconcpt 5y ago

Telna [1] is using Pharo to resolve roaming for an incredible amount of daily network traffic. I'm in their dev team. Here you have may others using it in production: https://pharo.org/success.html https://pharo.org/success.html [1] https://www.telna.com https://www.telna.com

igouy 5y ago
Curious -- Why not Erlang?
- sebastianconcpt 5y ago
  The GTP client that touches Pharo is done in Erlang.
  - igouy 5y ago
    So Pharo for the front-end?
    - sebastianconcpt 5y ago
      Pharo runs in the backend for resolving roaming for SS7, GTP and DIAMETER. It orchestrates a lot in there in order to provide Network Virtualization [1] [1] https://www.telna.com/blog/why-virtualization-is-critical-to-mobile-networks https://www.telna.com/blog/why-virtualization-is-critical-to...
theamk 5y ago
This is super interesting! Do you have more information about this? - How many developers are working on that codebase simultaneously? - What is your workflow like? Do you have any sort of CI system? How does it work? - How does your deployment works? Is it a single beefy machine or a fleet of smaller ones? - What kind of network protocols do you use? Any code generation? - How do you deal with errors -- are there equivalents of "coredumps" or "logs" in the Pharo world?

agumonkey 5y ago

around 2009 there were a few websites running on pharo object db IIRC

igouy 5y ago

> I just can't think of a single thing it would be useful for. Have you wanted to love Pharo enough to install and use it?