If I put the language last then I would mislead people into thinking its something like Emacs. In this case an IDE that also happens to have a programming language. It will only add to the confusion. I have recommended Pharo to several people their complaints were very similar a) the gui looks weird / ugly b) documentation does not look good/dated . As a matter of fact the language is one the things people liked, together with live code of course. I think the language is one of the very strong points of Pharo and it should be promoted. It also makes the goal of Pharo clear, the language comes first. But if others agree to put the language last, I have no issue its our website , the majority should decide. I don't want to go into the whole debate of whether Pharo is this kind of Smalltalk or the other kind of Smalltalk. Again if Pharo developers decide on what kinda of Smalltalk Pharo is I am more than happy to put that into the description. But to be frank with you I find the description of the old site too vague for my taste and very confusing. I want a description that is specific, clear and foremost practical. "Immersive" does not mean anything to me, "open" again not very clear (do you mean open source ?), "live" ? sorry I dont understand what is live ? These are the questions people will ask when they see the description. Please approach this from the side of a very sceptical yet curious coder that does not share the same excitement and love as you and me about Pharo. If he read a bunch of vague words its much more likely to be put off a lot more than seeing the very efficient and practical Smalltalk syntax. I also dont believe the ~20% of Ruby, how much stuff Ruby has that Pharo does not ? I rather not compete with other languages and make people see Pharo as elitist. On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 9:25 PM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com>wrote:
kilon alios wrote
Class library section as third section sounds excellent idea, please if you can give me a paragraph or anyone with experience on this. I try to add anything I know about Pharo but unfortunately there is still much I don't know.
I think it's important to introduce the concepts in a very specific order, most importantly with the language last (the syntax was always the least interesting thing about Smalltalk, and it addresses concerns about turning people off right off the bat, without hiding anything) (see http://forum.world.st/Pharo-is-Smalltalk-and-Not-tp4757342p4757348.html): 1. a [pick 2 or 3 of: dynamic, open, immersive, live] computing environment (like an IDE and OS rolled into one) 2. [appropriate adjectives] core libraries 3. a dialect of the Smalltalk programming language
The immersive environment of live objects is the most compelling - from a programming standpoint, sending someone a serialized debug session, customizing the world menu, the simplicity of adding settings, all in a live, dynamic way; that you have a whole computer (OS + IDE + libraries) done with ~20% of the LOC of Ruby 1.9 (without *any* tools!) and ~0.5% of the LOC of Windows Vista; this is the blue plane idea that Smalltalk took on
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