On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 10:01 AM, GOUBIER Thierry <thierry.goubier@cea.fr>wrote:
I find this debate interesting... but a bit strange
For me, Smalltalk-80 is what is inside the 80's book, and no implementation of Smalltalk was really Smalltalk-80 but something else (some principles plus a huge amount of code)... Pharo is no more different from Smalltalk-80 than all the others were, and, compared to Self, Pharo looks like a very tame variant :)
So for me, Pharo will stay Pharo Smalltalk: a member of a large family which I had the pleasure to work in and use for a very long time, and in many different shapes but still respecting the same core principles.
+1. Saying Pharo is not a Smalltalk is clearly absurd. At the risk of getting into a "what have the romans done for us?" thread, I'll say the following. The syntax is a superset of Smalltalk-80 (additions being literal ByteArrays, pragmas, class messages for creating weak arrays & ephemerons). The class library is a superset of Smalltalk-80 plus bug fixes. The only significant extensions are closures, exceptions and traits, but exceptions and traits, much like Dan Ingall's and Alan Borning's multiple inheritance implementation in Smalltalk-80 is done in the language. Closures are nicer than SMalltalk-80 blocks, but they're the same essential light-weight lambda idea with somewhat improved semantics, and all that was wrong with Smalltalk-80 blocks was the lack of reentrancy. A language like Newspeak is "Smalltalk-inspired". It differs significantly (semantics: nested classes, lexically-scoped outer sends, mixins, syntax: ability to elide self, initialization of temps with their declaration). I don't see the point of saying Pharo is not Smalltalk. I see the point of saying Pharo is not Squeak, and I thoguht that was the point. But saying Pharo is not Smalltalk is petty larceny.
Thierry
________________________________________ De : Pharo-dev [pharo-dev-bounces@lists.pharo.org] de la part de Sean P. DeNigris [sean@clipperadams.com] Date d'envoi : mardi 5 novembre 2013 17:53 Ã : pharo-dev@lists.pharo.org Objet : Re: [Pharo-dev] Feature request poll
Tudor Girba-2 wrote
Pharo is Pharo. And we should promote it like that.
It is inherently confusing because originally "Smalltalk" meant "a language/environment that's continually reinvented every 4 years based on the knowledge gained by the last iteration". Then, Smalltalk-80 was frozen and released, and "Smalltalk" was repurposed in the wider world as a shorthand for Smalltalk-80. So, one would be correct in saying that Pharo is Smalltalk in the original meaning, as the next iteration after 80 (although it missed the 4 year target by a bit ha ha).
But, since the nearly universal understanding of "Smalltalk" is Smalltalk-80, the "more true" and practical choice is to say that Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired (i.e. inspired by Smalltalk-80, but clearly not Smalltalk-80).
HTH.
----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Feature-request-poll-tp4718993p4719415.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
-- best, Eliot