2014-04-30 15:07 GMT-03:00 Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com>:
Here is an unfortunate quote from that thread.
""" emaringolo 1 point an hour ago Pharo is aimed to do serious/business development, and it's been reshaping itself since its conception (several years ago when it forked from Squeak). It doesn't want to have any backward or "historic" compatibility with other Smalltalks. You can see its changelogs and the roadmap for future versions to see how it is different, and how it will be different. """
This makes it sound like Pharo wants remove compatibility simply for the sake of not being a Smalltalk. As opposed to what I believe Esteban meant. And yes I understand that English is not his native language, and there are many for whom it is, who still use it poorly.
That's certainly an interpretation. I didn't mean it wants to REMOVE compatibility, but I did mean it doesn't wan't backward compatibility with Smalltalk per se. Sometimes it isn't compatible with previous versions of itself! I remember having read exactly that: "we don't want backward compatibility".
What I believe he meant, is that Pharo will not be constrained by backward compatibility. If a change or feature that is of value to Pharo Smalltalk. That feature will be done even if it means breaking backward compatibility with other Smalltalk 80 based Smalltalks.
This is exactly what I meant.
We are moving forward. But this does not invalidate Pharo being a Smalltalk. As has been stated before, breaking changes happened in Smalltalk 76 and 80.
As a disclaimer I'm a strong defender of not hiding the "Smalltalk" heritage in Pharo. However there is no need to name something "Pharo Smalltalk" to have a connection with its past, but also no need to avoid any mention of the word Smalltalk in the new home page. At least from the SEO point of view. :) Regards, Esteban A. Maringolo