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I'm currently playing with Pharo Smalltalk and everything is very accessible. I wonder why Smalltalk Environments did not catch on as operating systems, let alo

by 0xpgm 3y ago

I'm currently playing with Pharo Smalltalk and everything is very accessible. I wonder why Smalltalk Environments did not catch on as operating systems, let alone just as languages, where everything can be tinkered with and modified on the fly. Apple sounds like the kind of company that would successfully build a smalltalk device, yet they go the opposite way of locking down their devices hard.

jfoutz 3y ago
Version control. Small talk is amazing, but dumping the binary to distribute is so scary. Did I unload my email client? Are my credentials in there? Gah. Scary.
- whartung 3y ago
  The Pharo hackers write Pharo to enable them to make Pharo better. They are a shining manifestation of eating their own dog food. Outcomes of this effort are powerful version control and package management. I don’t know, but it seems quite clear to me that Pharo folks start with base images, load their package dependencies on top of it, then hack away on their own code. Inevitably they create a new package with a list of dependencies for others to use. What they don’t appear to be doing is “living” in their images. Rather they create application specific instances from source code. Emacs users tend to “live” more within it than the SmallTalk/Pharo people do. In the end they distribute images assembled much like a Docker image is today, made from a deterministic set of sources and then snapshot.
  - ElevenLathe 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm somewhat of a Pharo hacker and the workflow is pretty similar to any other software: Start with a base image, create a package, add code to the package, use git (via Iceberg) to save diffs for a particular package off for distribution. It's analogous to hacking on an operating system image in a container: keep your code and the system separate (via the "packages" abstraction in a Pharo image, or via the filesystem in an OCI container image) and you will be fine. The "Baseline" concept is a bit opaque (and weirdly named IMO, but a lot of the Pharo community is European, and especially French, so presumably it makes more sense in that context) but is a form of dependency management that works OK, though it would be nice to have a more Linux-distro type experience for installing packages.
- igouy 3y ago
  > dumping the binary to distribute is so scary So don't. Build a reproducible distribution image from a base image + fileIn source code. https://cuis-smalltalk.github.io/TheCuisBook/Daily-Workflow.html https://cuis-smalltalk.github.io/TheCuisBook/Daily-Workflow.... https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Developer/ld6E19QIMo4C?hl=en&gbpv=1 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Develope...
  - jfoutz 3y ago
    That's awesome! Thanks! I haven't messed around with smalltalk since squeak, around the dabble-db days. I was uncomfortable with the montachello (I think?) diff system. Maybe I'll have to give it another spin the next time I get a good long break.
igouy 3y ago
Many many more people want / need to use something than want / need to tinker.
- 0xpgm 3y ago
  An environment that makes it very easy to tinker will produce more potential creators resulting in more things to use
  - igouy 3y ago
    Maybe; maybe not. I have experienced working with people who seemed far more interested in tinkering with the Smalltalk IDE than work on the mundane tasks needed to complete the project. They preferred tinkering to work ;-)

by 0xpgm 3y ago

jfoutz 3y ago

Version control. Small talk is amazing, but dumping the binary to distribute is so scary. Did I unload my email client? Are my credentials in there? Gah. Scary.

whartung 3y ago
The Pharo hackers write Pharo to enable them to make Pharo better. They are a shining manifestation of eating their own dog food. Outcomes of this effort are powerful version control and package management. I don’t know, but it seems quite clear to me that Pharo folks start with base images, load their package dependencies on top of it, then hack away on their own code. Inevitably they create a new package with a list of dependencies for others to use. What they don’t appear to be doing is “living” in their images. Rather they create application specific instances from source code. Emacs users tend to “live” more within it than the SmallTalk/Pharo people do. In the end they distribute images assembled much like a Docker image is today, made from a deterministic set of sources and then snapshot.
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm somewhat of a Pharo hacker and the workflow is pretty similar to any other software: Start with a base image, create a package, add code to the package, use git (via Iceberg) to save diffs for a particular package off for distribution. It's analogous to hacking on an operating system image in a container: keep your code and the system separate (via the "packages" abstraction in a Pharo image, or via the filesystem in an OCI container image) and you will be fine. The "Baseline" concept is a bit opaque (and weirdly named IMO, but a lot of the Pharo community is European, and especially French, so presumably it makes more sense in that context) but is a form of dependency management that works OK, though it would be nice to have a more Linux-distro type experience for installing packages.
igouy 3y ago
> dumping the binary to distribute is so scary So don't. Build a reproducible distribution image from a base image + fileIn source code. https://cuis-smalltalk.github.io/TheCuisBook/Daily-Workflow.html https://cuis-smalltalk.github.io/TheCuisBook/Daily-Workflow.... https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Developer/ld6E19QIMo4C?hl=en&gbpv=1 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Develope...
- jfoutz 3y ago
  That's awesome! Thanks! I haven't messed around with smalltalk since squeak, around the dabble-db days. I was uncomfortable with the montachello (I think?) diff system. Maybe I'll have to give it another spin the next time I get a good long break.

igouy 3y ago

Many many more people want / need to use something than want / need to tinker.

0xpgm 3y ago
An environment that makes it very easy to tinker will produce more potential creators resulting in more things to use
- igouy 3y ago
  Maybe; maybe not. I have experienced working with people who seemed far more interested in tinkering with the Smalltalk IDE than work on the mundane tasks needed to complete the project. They preferred tinkering to work ;-)