Pharo: enterprise applications at prototype speed :) (I'm one of the guys who hear "enterprise" and get scared, but thats probably because of my java-past :() best, Esteban El 21/02/2012, a las 9:08a.m., Sven Van Caekenberghe escribió:
On 21 Feb 2012, at 09:52, Göran Krampe wrote:
Pharo (or Smalltalk in general) is for me about *speed* of development.
Yes, one can make a huge list of other attributes - but it all boils down to that *for me*. For example, one could say "no, it is also about quality of code through good OO design" - but if you think about it, quality of design gives *speed*. The quality in itself doesn't give me "value" (well, I am being black-and-white here), but the speed that a good quality codebase gives me (in adapting to change etc) is true hard value. That speed makes programming fun. That speed impresses people. That speed is a true distinguishing feature.
And of course, the speed comes as a product of many factors of which some are unique (but not all of them are):
language-brevity * language-modeling-capability * tools * dynamic-typing * instant-compilation * app-always-running = awesome speed!
...and if we break out tools from the above equation:
tools = full-reflection * written-all-in-itself * everyone-can-contribute-no-need-for-plugin-system-like-eclipse * crossplatform-so-everyone-can-contribute-regardless-of-OS
So if I would "pitch" Pharo to other developers, it would be about the extravagant speed of development. Sure, cross platform and good performance through Cog is nice, but for me and many other web devs (which perhaps contitutes 90% of the audience) it would be Linux anyway and the VM speed is not a real problem. But as I said, cross-platform is important for us to be able to work together on "common ground" improving the environment.
Yes, well written and so true (for me in any case).
Once you are used to Smalltalk it is so hard to go back, it is hard to describe.
Thx,
Sven