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Because if you don't understand "an IDE , OS rolled into one" then you don't understand what Smalltalk is anyway. Its not easy to explain what Pharo is , the sa

by kilon 11y ago

Because if you don't understand "an IDE , OS rolled into one" then you don't understand what Smalltalk is anyway. Its not easy to explain what Pharo is , the same way its not easy to explain what Emacs is , etc. There are may ideas and workflow integrated into it and its development workflow is radically different to normal programming languages. "Does it compile to executables" No it does not , but there is no need. Pharo can be distributed with your application and it does need to installed its a standalone. "or does it require an interpreter or VM at runtime?" its interpreted to byte code and it has a JIT VM. It is always runtime ;) Meaning everything is live and running even your source code. Compilation happens under the hood without the user being aware of it. "Can applications be built from command-line (or a build script on a CI server), or is it tightly coupled with the IDE?" There is a command line interface , also any method can be exported to command line and Pharo can run without a GUI. "The Wikipedia article mentions some web frameworks, but the Pharo website shows screenshots of what appear to be desktop GUI applications (or maybe data visualizations running inside the IDE, a la R with RStudio?)." There is a web framework which quite popular and actively developed Seaside that allow you to use javascript , html and the usual suspect. Plenty of others frameworks exists as well but not so actively developed. Most success stories in the web site use those frameworks. "Maybe someone with some hands-on experience could provide a TL;DR, for those who aren't willing to read the full book just to get a high-level sense of this?" you can also drop in IRC for general directions, and ask questions to the mailing list, the community is very welcomed for newcomers. But give pharo a try and ask questions and you wont regret it Pharo is a great way and fun way to create software. I have made also video tutorial for newcomers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol5ivaEATLQ&list=PLqbtQ7OkSta0ULYAd7Qdxof851ybh-_m_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol5ivaEATLQ&list=PLqbtQ7OkSt... I have also made this simple guide to explain what Pharo really is http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about

reymus 11y ago
> then you don't understand what Smalltalk is anyway Sorry, but I think that is just wrong. As far as I know, Pharo is one of the best and more approachable alternatives to enter the Smalltalk world. They should be doing a better job at welcoming people to "their world". If they want people to just come already knowing what they are going to get, I don't see how are they going to go mainstream, ever (assuming they would like to.)
- kilon 11y ago
  My personal opinion on this and no way the opinion of core Pharo devs, I am just a newcomer to Pharo and a minor contributor. Mainstream will kill Pharo in an instant. Pharo is too cool and too well designed for mainstream. Pharo also is going towards a complete opposite direction of sacrificing features over ease of usage. So in the end Pharo is not designed for the mainstream developer its designed for the developer that looks for something radical diffirent. But diffirence comes with a cost, it means that you get out your comfort zone, explaining basic concepts takes much more time and effort because of lack of familiarity etc etc. So if you dont understand Pharo at first try, thats not a bug thats a feature. If you do understand Pharo at second try that's a bug. Some people refer to pharo as "the red pill" of coding, taking the red pill has its advantages but also significant disadvantages. The choice in the end is yours. Sure documentation and website can be improved but it wont solve the problem that Pharo is outside mainstream way of doing coding because this is what makes Pharo so fun to work with :)
  - proksoup 11y ago
    This would be great if there weren't so many red pills to choose from. Like calling it "the" red pill is overselling it I mean. It's "a" red pill.
    - draven 11y ago
      This "red pill" metaphor really can apply to anything. For example for a high-level programming language user, C could be a red-pill if learning it helps them visualize what's happening automagically thanks to the VM/interpreter of their usual language.
    - kilon 11y ago
      As far as me is concerned to call something a red pill , it will have to offer a very diffirent experience. Thats is definetly not the case when it comes to coding, where you have the same old same recipe with some new things here and there. This is why also it took me so long to get used doing things in Pharo compared to learning another programming language which would be far faster. Pharo requires a rethinking of the fundamentals of the coding workflow. You could argue that some language like Lisp requires the same, but the problem is that Lisp is just a language, Pharo is a lot more than that. So for me, Pharo is the only "red pill" I can think of. Not because its diffirent but because is so fundamentally diffirent. Everything else is just blue pills with some red spots here and there. Thus I cant call Pharo , "a" red pill. But if you have something else that is as diffirent as Pharo is I am mostly welcome the info , love to try fresh approaches to coding :) Another thing to note here is that I dont use the term "red pill" to identify it as something superior. Its not superior , far from it , it come with its own problems and weaknesses. Pharo is neither a paradise or a utopia. Pharo is not for everyone but for specific people looking for a very diffirent way of coding. But even they may not like Pharo. In the end Pharo is another way of doing coding, it wont make you sexy with the ladies or turn you into a super coder.
detaro 11y ago
> Because if you don't understand "an IDE , OS rolled into one" then you don't understand what Smalltalk is anyway. For people that know Smalltalk, "a Smalltalk environment" contains more information than "an IDE, OS rolled into one" (which you also could possibly apply as a description to some javascript environments or a whole number of other things that could exist, it is not like Smalltalk is the only way to build such an environment)
cgh 11y ago
How does source control work for Pharo? I know it was an issue with Smalltalk as your "source" was a modified binary image. Is this the same?
- detaro 11y ago
  The source still is available as source code, so tools can work with that. The standard in the Smalltalk world is Monticello, I hope they added good tooling around it (the implementation I've seen was painful if you had ever used mercurial, git or even SVN, but I don't know how things are with Pharo)
- igouy 11y ago
  Incidentally, even back in the day with the original Smalltalk-80 the "source" was available in a plain text sources file and the programmer's changes and additions were available in a plain text changes file which were in-sync with the image file. Of course, arbitrary code could be exported in text files from the "binary image" file (even if that required code to be de-compiled from bytecode to text).
- kilon 11y ago
  You can use Pharo with git and github outside the box if you are using MacOS or Linux, there are some issues I think with Windows. Pharo uses Filetree which export source to files and makes commits , pulls , pushs etc. Gitfiletree allows filetree to be managed by git from inside Pharo without the use of a terminal but you can still use the terminal if that is your thing. I explain filetree, git and github in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2WNYDtO0cE&list=PLqbtQ7OkSta0ULYAd7Qdxof851ybh-_m_&index=22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2WNYDtO0cE&list=PLqbtQ7OkSt...
- justbeast 11y ago
  Source control works similarly as to how it does with other languages. (The modified binary image thing was never the only, or the main, option).

by kilon 11y ago

reymus 11y ago

> then you don't understand what Smalltalk is anyway Sorry, but I think that is just wrong. As far as I know, Pharo is one of the best and more approachable alternatives to enter the Smalltalk world. They should be doing a better job at welcoming people to "their world". If they want people to just come already knowing what they are going to get, I don't see how are they going to go mainstream, ever (assuming they would like to.)

kilon 11y ago
My personal opinion on this and no way the opinion of core Pharo devs, I am just a newcomer to Pharo and a minor contributor. Mainstream will kill Pharo in an instant. Pharo is too cool and too well designed for mainstream. Pharo also is going towards a complete opposite direction of sacrificing features over ease of usage. So in the end Pharo is not designed for the mainstream developer its designed for the developer that looks for something radical diffirent. But diffirence comes with a cost, it means that you get out your comfort zone, explaining basic concepts takes much more time and effort because of lack of familiarity etc etc. So if you dont understand Pharo at first try, thats not a bug thats a feature. If you do understand Pharo at second try that's a bug. Some people refer to pharo as "the red pill" of coding, taking the red pill has its advantages but also significant disadvantages. The choice in the end is yours. Sure documentation and website can be improved but it wont solve the problem that Pharo is outside mainstream way of doing coding because this is what makes Pharo so fun to work with :)
- proksoup 11y ago
  This would be great if there weren't so many red pills to choose from. Like calling it "the" red pill is overselling it I mean. It's "a" red pill.
  - draven 11y ago
    This "red pill" metaphor really can apply to anything. For example for a high-level programming language user, C could be a red-pill if learning it helps them visualize what's happening automagically thanks to the VM/interpreter of their usual language.
  - kilon 11y ago
    As far as me is concerned to call something a red pill , it will have to offer a very diffirent experience. Thats is definetly not the case when it comes to coding, where you have the same old same recipe with some new things here and there. This is why also it took me so long to get used doing things in Pharo compared to learning another programming language which would be far faster. Pharo requires a rethinking of the fundamentals of the coding workflow. You could argue that some language like Lisp requires the same, but the problem is that Lisp is just a language, Pharo is a lot more than that. So for me, Pharo is the only "red pill" I can think of. Not because its diffirent but because is so fundamentally diffirent. Everything else is just blue pills with some red spots here and there. Thus I cant call Pharo , "a" red pill. But if you have something else that is as diffirent as Pharo is I am mostly welcome the info , love to try fresh approaches to coding :) Another thing to note here is that I dont use the term "red pill" to identify it as something superior. Its not superior , far from it , it come with its own problems and weaknesses. Pharo is neither a paradise or a utopia. Pharo is not for everyone but for specific people looking for a very diffirent way of coding. But even they may not like Pharo. In the end Pharo is another way of doing coding, it wont make you sexy with the ladies or turn you into a super coder.

detaro 11y ago

> Because if you don't understand "an IDE , OS rolled into one" then you don't understand what Smalltalk is anyway. For people that know Smalltalk, "a Smalltalk environment" contains more information than "an IDE, OS rolled into one" (which you also could possibly apply as a description to some javascript environments or a whole number of other things that could exist, it is not like Smalltalk is the only way to build such an environment)

cgh 11y ago

How does source control work for Pharo? I know it was an issue with Smalltalk as your "source" was a modified binary image. Is this the same?

detaro 11y ago
The source still is available as source code, so tools can work with that. The standard in the Smalltalk world is Monticello, I hope they added good tooling around it (the implementation I've seen was painful if you had ever used mercurial, git or even SVN, but I don't know how things are with Pharo)
igouy 11y ago
Incidentally, even back in the day with the original Smalltalk-80 the "source" was available in a plain text sources file and the programmer's changes and additions were available in a plain text changes file which were in-sync with the image file. Of course, arbitrary code could be exported in text files from the "binary image" file (even if that required code to be de-compiled from bytecode to text).
kilon 11y ago
You can use Pharo with git and github outside the box if you are using MacOS or Linux, there are some issues I think with Windows. Pharo uses Filetree which export source to files and makes commits , pulls , pushs etc. Gitfiletree allows filetree to be managed by git from inside Pharo without the use of a terminal but you can still use the terminal if that is your thing. I explain filetree, git and github in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2WNYDtO0cE&list=PLqbtQ7OkSta0ULYAd7Qdxof851ybh-_m_&index=22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2WNYDtO0cE&list=PLqbtQ7OkSt...
justbeast 11y ago
Source control works similarly as to how it does with other languages. (The modified binary image thing was never the only, or the main, option).