On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 6:58 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:

very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website.

Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this "sorry that I am dead" mentality to them.

Pharo is a strategic platform to me. Productivity on that thing cannot be beaten. Still had proof today when looking for a nasty bug. Phil

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr>wrote:

...

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language that is Smalltalk-inspired. We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :). Doru On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name> wrote:

Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>:

very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website.

Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this "sorry that I am dead" mentality to them.

+1

Well said.

Norbert

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr>wrote:

...

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

-- www.tudorgirba.com "Every thing has its own flow"

2014-04-28 14:38 GMT-03:00 Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>:

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

...

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language that is Smalltalk-inspired. We went through this a few months ago. Pharo isn't inspired by Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk. Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO as bad as apologizing for it being dead.

I totally agree here. Esteban.

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:46 PM, S Krish <krishnamachari.sudhakar@gmail.com>wrote:

+1

Smalltalk heritage and its future should be carried on by "Pharo Smalltalk".

+1!

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:08 PM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>wrote:

...

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com>wrote:

...

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language that is Smalltalk-inspired.

We went through this a few months ago. Pharo isn't inspired by Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk. Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO as bad as apologizing for it being dead.

...

We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).

We don't need to avoid the S word either...

...

Doru

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name>wrote:

...

Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>:

very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website.

Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this "sorry that I am dead" mentality to them.

+1

Well said.

Norbert

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr>wrote:

...

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

-- best, Eliot

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

Hi Eliot,

I know we went through it, and we still disagree :). I have provided detailed arguments and I have seen no others that did refute mine.

OK, I'll bite :-). Point me to the arguments and I'll have a go at refutation. But my statement that Pharo is a Smalltalk boils own to the facts that Smalltalk has always evolved (Multiple inheritance was a discarded experiment that is in Smalltalk-80 for example, Tweak contains a sort-of slot idea, as another) and that Pharo's evolutions are no different to other evolutions that have enriched Smalltalk but not redefined it, and that one way to tell is to see if the VM or instruction set needs to be radically different to implement the system efficiently. So there's nothing un-Smalltalk about traits, or slots or a modular compiler.

I am certainly open to talking about it. I have no intention of lying or hiding. I am rather proud to be part of this community and to do my bit of contributing.

Us both.

But, please understand that my main concern is getting Pharo adopted which is what other Smalltalk rooted systems did not really manage until now. There are many ways to say the same thing. Some people will resonate with some messages, and some others will pick holes in them. I will focus on increasing the first set of people while preserving the semantics I believe in.

Quite. Agreed.

Doru

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:38 PM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>wrote:

...

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com>wrote:

...

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language that is Smalltalk-inspired.

We went through this a few months ago. Pharo isn't inspired by Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk. Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO as bad as apologizing for it being dead.

...

We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).

We don't need to avoid the S word either...

...

Doru

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name>wrote:

...

Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>:

very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website.

Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this "sorry that I am dead" mentality to them.

+1

Well said.

Norbert

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr>wrote:

...

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

-- best, Eliot

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

-- best, Eliot

2014-04-28 16:31 GMT-03:00 kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>:

I once laughed at the video when he pointed that pressing enter on workspace does not run the code. That was a "WTF" moment for me when I first tried workspace in Squeak. Many other strange things , instance variables by default private , Transcript separate from Workspace, no source files etc etc.

Because it is too weird to be grasped properly. Most if not all people expect scripted or REPL/Console execution. Also it is weird the fact that you can "modify everything" while running. It causes a dissonance. I felt that when I was introduced to Smalltalk, and years after that I found the same reception in newcomers. So it wasn't just me. Smalltalk is so great, that it is hard to summarize many of it awesome features in a short demo. One point for "selling" Pharo to non-smalltalkers is thinking in what the benefit they would get by developing with it. Maybe we should brainstorm on this point: "If you were to recommend Pharo to a Java/Ruby/PHP programmer, what would be your two main selling points?" (https://twitter.com/emaringolo/status/460867076178341888) IMHO, it is not a simple question to answer, because an existing smalltalker will get much more out of it than a newcomer. Regards!

Hi Phil, 2014-04-28 17:07 GMT-03:00 phil@highoctane.be <phil@highoctane.be>:

What no REPL? Check this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3067563/using-squeak-from-a-shell

"Works out of the box in Pharo 2.0. For prior versions (definitely works in 1.3 and 1.4), first file in https://gist.github.com/2602113"

I'm not saying it is not doable, if we have workspaces we can have something simple as a REPL (as your snippet shows). But it is not as prominent as a workspace. And of course it doesn't come bundled in the core image :) E.g. Think of the Javascript console in Chrome Developer Tools, where the console can work as a Workspace, a Transcript and an Inspector all in one. Or, think of python or ruby's irb. Esteban A. Maringolo

Hi Eliot, On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>wrote:

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com>wrote:

...

Hi Eliot,

I know we went through it, and we still disagree :). I have provided detailed arguments and I have seen no others that did refute mine.

OK, I'll bite :-). Point me to the arguments and I'll have a go at refutation.

Besides the points laid out in the discussions on this mailing list, I provided an initial argument here: http://www.tudorgirba.com/blog/pharo-is-pharo

But my statement that Pharo is a Smalltalk boils own to the facts that Smalltalk has always evolved

I agree on that. There is a point of view from which one could say that Pharo is Smalltalk by seeing Smalltalk as a movement, rather than specific implementation. Unfortunately, everyone else thinks of Smalltalk as a specific language, or set of languages with specific environments that typically look old enough to not be relevant anymore. (Multiple inheritance was a discarded experiment that is in Smalltalk-80

for example, Tweak contains a sort-of slot idea, as another) and that Pharo's evolutions are no different to other evolutions that have enriched Smalltalk but not redefined it, and that one way to tell is to see if the VM or instruction set needs to be radically different to implement the system efficiently. So there's nothing un-Smalltalk about traits, or slots or a modular compiler.

This is where our points diverge significantly. Just because Closure or JRuby run on a Java VM does not make them Java. They are their own languages. Similarly, just because Newspeak runs pretty much the same VM as Squeak or Pharo does not make it a Smalltalk either (according to the webpage it is a new programming language in the tradition of Self and Smalltalk). Things that want to have an identity should be allowed to get it as long as the due credits are acknowledged. Saying that there is nothing un-Smalltalk about slots, or compiler or traits and all sorts of other things is not incorrect, but saying that the same things are not defined by Smalltalk is not incorrect either. The point of view matters. As for deciding how much of difference should there be until we are not to be associated with the original, I would leave that to lawyers that have to do it. I will focus on trying to market a fantastic environment and community. But, there is another point, too. "Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired" is not just factual but also a statement of intention. We do not want to necessarily be Smalltalk. If the future proves that some decisions made in Smalltalk are good we will make them, too. Otherwise we will take other routes. That's a promise :) I am certainly open to talking about it. I have no intention of lying or

...

hiding. I am rather proud to be part of this community and to do my bit of contributing.

Us both.

...

But, please understand that my main concern is getting Pharo adopted which is what other Smalltalk rooted systems did not really manage until now. There are many ways to say the same thing. Some people will resonate with some messages, and some others will pick holes in them. I will focus on increasing the first set of people while preserving the semantics I believe in.

Quite. Agreed.

Great :) Doru

...

Doru

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:38 PM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>wrote:

...

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com>wrote:

...

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language that is Smalltalk-inspired.

We went through this a few months ago. Pharo isn't inspired by Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk. Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO as bad as apologizing for it being dead.

...

We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).

We don't need to avoid the S word either...

...

Doru

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name>wrote:

...

Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>:

very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website.

Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this "sorry that I am dead" mentality to them.

+1

Well said.

Norbert

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr

...

wrote:

...

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

-- best, Eliot

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

-- best, Eliot

-- www.tudorgirba.com "Every thing has its own flow"

"So it's a question of who you're marketing to. Since we're marketing to non-Smalltalkers (quite wise since 16% market penetration is the tipping point [1], and we're not there yet)" If you can get Pharo Smalltalk to be what makes people feel great about using it and creating great applications with, it will succeed far more than Ruby has in 5 years ahead. We need not push our efforts and energy in labelling ( falsely ), that will give no impact / or add any value to the perception of people. Java succeeded because it enabled many to move on to the web enabled world.. massively.. Rails succeeded because developers found it easier and simpler to bring up a complete website and maintain it than its alternatives. JRuby helped in as much Heroku did in its growth. Many developers made their fortune out of Rails.. iPad, iPhone, iPod, now android phones / tablets succeed well and truly because they enable the people to do what they want with it, make them feel great about using them too and bigger bet was developing for the Appstore and Android Market place that enabled many more to make money. Can we move on to have a Pharo Appstore with a demand for the apps in the store ... you will see more than 16% share you will need to make Pharo big. http://skrishnamachari.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/pharo-is-a-smalltalk-dialect... On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 5:54 AM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com>wrote:

Tudor Girba-2 wrote

...

There is a point of view from which one could say that Pharo is Smalltalk by seeing Smalltalk as a movement, rather than specific implementation. Unfortunately, everyone else thinks of Smalltalk as a specific language, or set of languages with specific environments that typically look old enough to not be relevant anymore.

Yes! This is a tower of babel argument. For almost every programmer alive, Smaltalk = Smalltalk 80 -> Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired For us, Smaltalk = "experimental Dynabook software that bootstraps itself (ideally every 4 years)" -> Pharo is Smalltalk 109.

So it's a question of who you're marketing to. Since we're marketing to non-Smalltalkers (quite wise since 16% market penetration is the tipping point [1], and we're not there yet), clearly "Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired" is the thing to say. It's not any more or less true than the latter, just more useful in its context.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756891.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

On 29 Apr 2014, at 02:24, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com> wrote:

Tudor Girba-2 wrote

...

There is a point of view from which one could say that Pharo is Smalltalk by seeing Smalltalk as a movement, rather than specific implementation. Unfortunately, everyone else thinks of Smalltalk as a specific language, or set of languages with specific environments that typically look old enough to not be relevant anymore.

Yes! This is a tower of babel argument. For almost every programmer alive, Smaltalk = Smalltalk 80 -> Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired For us, Smaltalk = "experimental Dynabook software that bootstraps itself (ideally every 4 years)" -> Pharo is Smalltalk 109.

So it's a question of who you're marketing to. Since we're marketing to non-Smalltalkers (quite wise since 16% market penetration is the tipping point [1], and we're not there yet), clearly "Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired" is the thing to say. It's not any more or less true than the latter, just more useful in its context.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

+100 is not about “what is or what is not pharo”, is about how we spread it. all of us know that pharo is a smalltalk, but “us” is the 600 people of this list. there is a world outside. And I even would say: a brave world (yet not so new). So the question is how we reach them (or at least more of them). You are losing time arguing something that does not have any sense because is clear (for us) what pharo is. That’s not the discussion. Not at all. This is a true story: (eve-online chat, the more nerd of the games around, aprox. 25% of their players are programmers or systems-related) X>So, what do you do? me>I’m a programmer X>yes, me too… but what do you do? me>Pharo, a kind of Smalltalk X>What? me>a Smalltalk X>Is not that an old long time dead language? how is possible to work on it? me> [LONG EXPLANATION] X>I never knew anyone who programs in that. I do games, so I program in C++… me>but you know that *this* game is made in Python, isn’t? X>yes, but Python is modern, even if not as powerful as C++ me>plop And like that, it happened several times. So… until someone demonstrate that the majority of the programming community in the world does not have a pre-concept around Smalltalk, I sustain that we need to present our supergreat environment in better ways that just step there saying “look the magnificent smalltalk”! Btw… Gilad did same thing with newspeak: He said “is in the tradition of” with is just another way of saying “is smalltalk/self-inspired”. And another btw: I do agree with Gilad: Newspeak is not Smalltalk (same as Self is not)… They share a tradition, but if we can say that Newspeak and Self are “Smalltalks” we need to say that Java and C# are “C plus pluses”. cheers, Esteban

----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756891.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

On 05/13/2014 10:45 AM, Craig Latta wrote:

Hoi!

Eliot wrote:

...

Pharo isn't inspired by Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk. Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO as bad as apologizing for it being dead... We don't need to avoid the S word... Sean later wrote:

...

...it's a question of who you're marketing to. Since we're marketing to non-Smalltalkers (quite wise since 16% market penetration is the tipping point, and we're not there yet), clearly "Pharo is Smalltalk- inspired" is the thing to say. It's not any more or less true than the latter, just more useful in its context. And of course, with apologies to Alan, some of us think the name "Smalltalk" was a poor choice from day one (in 1971). Surely there are names which are suitably "innocuous"[1] but also convey some of the magic in "providing computer support for the creative spirit in everyone"[2]. "Smalltalk" is a vague and anemic name. From that weak starting point, the other baggage is even heavier (perhaps it's helpful to think of a balloon here? :).

I would use a new name and not mention "Smalltalk" at all unless asked about it. At that point, I would proudly recount accomplishments. Whenever someone just blurts out that Smalltalk is dead, I always correct them, and it's not difficult. "Smalltalk-inspired" is a non-starter, because it implies (in all contexts) that there isn't a direct line of descent (there clearly is). I agree that it sounds mealy-mouthed, disingenuous. "Smalltalk-derived" would be the honest phrasing, and also sounds bad. Yeesh, if you have a problem with the "Smalltalk" name, don't be the first to mention it. :)

Let's put more energy into a concise and intriguing description. I think the primary concepts are programming, dynamism and messaging. The word "livecoding" seems to resonate these days. If we're going to repeat a word twenty times, I would choose that one. :) It has a nice ring that draws people in. When they ask what livecoding is, you can describe dynamism, and then describe how the coding is structured (messaging, objects, etc.).

thanks,

-C

[1] http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html [2] http://tinyurl.com/25s52qd (archive.org, Ingalls)

-- Craig Latta www.netjam.org +31 6 2757 7177 (SMS ok) + 1 415 287 3547 (no SMS)

I would like to repent of my position that Pharo is Smalltalk vs. Pharo is Pharo. I have been watching videos on Self. I have also given my understanding some more thought. I do strongly dislike and argue against the Pharo is Smalltalk inspired. To me it is not accurate. As Craig said, Pharo is Smalltalk derived. It still runs Smalltalk code without conversion. It is still born from a Smalltalk. Pharo may be Self inspired or ??? inspired. But it is from Smalltalk therefore Smalltalk derived. Here is why I think it is okay to say Pharo is Pharo. And when Smalltalk is mentioned, explain that Pharo is Smalltalk derived. Pharo began as a Smalltalk with a vision to expand beyond Smalltalk-80 and add features inspired by other modern programming languages. I still believe that none of this makes Pharo not a Smalltalk. But here is why I in my current understanding would change to Pharo is Pharo. Smalltalk is a language, name, environment and implementation created by a certain group of people. Pharo is not that group of people. Pharo began with an artifact from those people. So the question could be presented, does Pharo have the right to conscript the name Smalltalk and extend its vision, implementation and meaning. Conservatively, I would say it is fairer to Pharo and to Smalltalk to let Pharo be Pharo and have liberty in its vision, implementation, definitions and marketing decisions. Just a few more thoughts to toss into the fray. Jimmie

I agree whole heartedly. Ditch “agile” a tool/language can’t be agile anyway… agile is a characteristic of a team, their process, and their dynamic. And it’s generally meaningless now. Also, Pharo IS a Smalltalk. That’s the biggest thing that makes it interesting. Saying Pharo isn’t Smalltalk is like saying Clojure isn’t Lisp. In Clojure’s case, it’s further from classic Lisp than Pharo is from Smalltalk-80. Dave On May 15, 2014, at 1:02 PM, kmo <voxkmp@gmail.com> wrote:

Looking at the new pharo website (it’s great, by the way), I found I was more upset than I thought I would be by the total absence of the s-word.

Perhaps lots of people think smalltalk is a dead language but that’s not the only view of smalltalk that people have out there.

I came to pharo looking for a new, better way of developing applications. I knew from reading about the history of computing that smalltalk was the purest object oriented language. I knew that it had pioneered many advanced ideas in program development. I knew that it was so far ahead of its time that other languages were still hobbling along behind it trying to catch up. I knew that java and C# were constantly trying to be more smalltalk-like. So I looked for a smalltalk – ideally an open source smalltalk that I could use on Linux. And so I came to pharo. If someone had told me that pharo was not smalltalk, I would not have been interested, I would have though pharo was just a niche product (like Rebol, say) - something that might simply fade away with no history behind it. And I’m sure there are other people like me out there who also have heard of the smalltalk mystique. This heritage is something to be proud of.

So why hide what pharo is?

It’s not smalltalk’s reputation as /dead/ that I think is likely to put people off. It’s more smalltalks’s reputation as an academic’s language, used to investigate abstruse computer science problems, but unsuitable for mundane day-to-day development. The sort of language that cannot produce a stand-alone executable (a myth - but pharo could do with a deployment wizard of some kind). The sort of language that can produce incredible data visualisations (Roassal) but is unable to put up a decent data entry screen (Spec). (Sorry, that's unfair but I could not resist it! )

Rather than hide the smalltalk origins of pharo, I think they should be shouted from the rooftops. I would add something like this to the web page.

*/Pharo is an alive-and-kicking, developer-focused, version of smalltalk – the most beautiful idea in the history of computing./*

Just my two cents.

By the way, I really don't like the idea of using /agile /as a description of pharo. Agile means almost nothing now - it's just a management buzzword for nothing in particular.

-- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4759204.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Yes, but Clojure being a Lisp is why I use it. Same as Pharo being a Smalltalk is why I use it. They are both evolutions, and looking at them there is no way not to immediately see what they are. On May 15, 2014, at 1:56 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:

On 15 May 2014, at 20:18, David Astels <dastels@icloud.com> wrote:

...

I agree whole heartedly. Ditch “agile” a tool/language can’t be agile anyway… agile is a characteristic of a team, their process, and their dynamic. And it’s generally meaningless now.

Also, Pharo IS a Smalltalk. That’s the biggest thing that makes it interesting. Saying Pharo isn’t Smalltalk is like saying Clojure isn’t Lisp. In Clojure’s case, it’s further from classic Lisp than Pharo is from Smalltalk-80.

Dave

Copied today from http://clojure.org :

<< Clojure is a dynamic programming language that targets the Java Virtual Machine (and the CLR, and JavaScript). It is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Every feature supported by Clojure is supported at runtime. Clojure provides easy access to the Java frameworks, with optional type hints and type inference, to ensure that calls to Java can avoid reflection.

Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system. Clojure is predominantly a functional programming language, and features a rich set of immutable, persistent data structures. When mutable state is needed, Clojure offers a software transactional memory system and reactive Agent system that ensure clean, correct, multithreaded designs.

I hope you find Clojure's combination of facilities elegant, powerful, practical and fun to use.

...

...

Lisp is _not_ mentioned in the first paragraph, and only once (ok twice, but in the same sentence) in the second.

This is all about marketing, not about denying something. Yes, the goal is not to scare people away or to start with potentially limiting or worse negative connotations.

...

On May 15, 2014, at 1:02 PM, kmo <voxkmp@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Looking at the new pharo website (it’s great, by the way), I found I was more upset than I thought I would be by the total absence of the s-word.

Perhaps lots of people think smalltalk is a dead language but that’s not the only view of smalltalk that people have out there.

I came to pharo looking for a new, better way of developing applications. I knew from reading about the history of computing that smalltalk was the purest object oriented language. I knew that it had pioneered many advanced ideas in program development. I knew that it was so far ahead of its time that other languages were still hobbling along behind it trying to catch up. I knew that java and C# were constantly trying to be more smalltalk-like. So I looked for a smalltalk – ideally an open source smalltalk that I could use on Linux. And so I came to pharo. If someone had told me that pharo was not smalltalk, I would not have been interested, I would have though pharo was just a niche product (like Rebol, say) - something that might simply fade away with no history behind it. And I’m sure there are other people like me out there who also have heard of the smalltalk mystique. This heritage is something to be proud of.

So why hide what pharo is?

It’s not smalltalk’s reputation as /dead/ that I think is likely to put people off. It’s more smalltalks’s reputation as an academic’s language, used to investigate abstruse computer science problems, but unsuitable for mundane day-to-day development. The sort of language that cannot produce a stand-alone executable (a myth - but pharo could do with a deployment wizard of some kind). The sort of language that can produce incredible data visualisations (Roassal) but is unable to put up a decent data entry screen (Spec). (Sorry, that's unfair but I could not resist it! )

Rather than hide the smalltalk origins of pharo, I think they should be shouted from the rooftops. I would add something like this to the web page.

*/Pharo is an alive-and-kicking, developer-focused, version of smalltalk – the most beautiful idea in the history of computing./*

Just my two cents.

By the way, I really don't like the idea of using /agile /as a description of pharo. Agile means almost nothing now - it's just a management buzzword for nothing in particular.

-- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4759204.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Once, when I told an old friend I was doing Smalltalk, he asked me "Are you doing computer archeology?" It is difficult to fight this. Hilaire Le 15/05/2014 22:09, Sergi Reyner a écrit :

"Pharo is a Smalltalk for the 21st century." - Sergi Reyner.

Cheers, Sergi

-- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu

Le 16/05/2014 20:18, phil@highoctane.be a écrit :

Back to the future after 30 years of spinning your wheels -------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanting to code at the speed of tought? Wishing the machine was your friend and not a roadblock? Want to burn cash as slow as possible while maximizing your output?

If so, get a copy of Pharo! It is not your (grand) daddy's Smalltalk!

That's why I understand this argument about not advertising Smalltalk in Pharo. Whatever we do or say, this huge mass of followers, once they heard Smalltalk they fill their head with red light warning, Smalltalk = old/deprecated/obsolete. For Pharo willing to socially scale = need to take this in consideration. Hilaire -- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu

I don't get why C is not old / deprecated / obsolete . Afterall its as old as Smalltalk Who really uses modern languages ? C - 1972 Python - 1991 C++ - 1983 Pascal - 1970 .NET - 2002 Lisp - 1958 Java - 1995 Ruby - 1995 Perl - 1987 Visual Basic - 1991 Javascript - 1995 Objective C- 1983 PHP - 1995 The vast majority of all popular languages out there are at least 20 years old. Thats ancient history. They are not old, they are dinosaurs. Even Clojure is 7 years old. The problem I see here is that the vast majority of things people are going to like in Pharo on a basic level are Smalltalk features. Implementation wise Pharo has improved a lot of things, added new stuff etc etc. But if you take a look at for example Python back in 1991 and you compare it with a recent version of Python you will find tons of diffirences. Yet its still Python. Actually its impossible to run a hello world of an old python (anything previous to version 3) that will run in the recent Python. Cause they changed print "hello World" to print( "hello World") , we are talking here about fundamental changes. Personally I don't see how Pharo being 100% Smalltalk makes it unable or difficult to implement super modern and efficient new features. Languages and Software is not written in stone, it continuously evolves and improves or else people stop using it. Vim was created back in 1991 people still find awesome, modern, extremely powerful. this is from Ruby's website -> "Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto <http://www.rubyist.net/~matz/>, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming." Ruby has the right to be called Smalltalk-inspired. because thats what it is. You got every right to describe Pharo any way you like but for me Pharo is "a modern implementation of Smalltalk. A visual environment for easy direct live coding" . On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Hilaire Fernandes < hilaire.fernandes@gmail.com> wrote:

Le 16/05/2014 20:18, phil@highoctane.be a écrit :

...

Back to the future after 30 years of spinning your wheels -------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanting to code at the speed of tought? Wishing the machine was your friend and not a roadblock? Want to burn cash as slow as possible while maximizing your output?

If so, get a copy of Pharo! It is not your (grand) daddy's Smalltalk!

That's why I understand this argument about not advertising Smalltalk in Pharo.

Whatever we do or say, this huge mass of followers, once they heard Smalltalk they fill their head with red light warning, Smalltalk = old/deprecated/obsolete.

For Pharo willing to socially scale = need to take this in consideration.

Hilaire -- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu

one or two things you mention could be addressed by http://sebastianconcept.github.io/Mapless redis might address horizontal scaling even better than meteor and you forgot to add the feature detecting mongo changes so reactivity is possible (btw you probably know but meteor is aiming to support more than mongo also famo.us but that's another story) sebastian o/

On 17/05/2014, at 10:52, Cédrick Béler <cdrick65@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all. Just some raw ideas below.

It several months I haven't coded in pharo. And I really miss it.

Meanwhile I've been lurking in iOS and recently meteor.

I think the latter is great. We might take ideas from it... But it has to be adapted to the smalltalk way. What I find great: - reactive data and DDP is great to me => we need an equivalent tech. Sure it's a piece of cake for Sven :-) => having standard data storage as files/nosql/gemstone working out of the box => controled replication of data on client to avoid latency is a very good idea too to me - smart package are cool too => st and js have already a close relationship, we should enforce and simplify it as with C

One killer app would be to have bridges to meteor BUT I would dream of an inspired version of/for Pharo.

Meteor core language is js + css + mongo + lots of conventions. It's a full stack. Problem of meteor: no live debugging sessions (whereas it seems live!) and whereas it seems damn simple (3 files), it has hundreds of MB hidden for each installed apps !

I would see mini pharo images (without UI) acting as web client/server interchangabily. A separate data layer (probably an image too) with full access on the server and controlled replication on clients. Then a connection with a classic pharo image to develop/debug the mini images.

Just some cents. I know this is quite naive and not easy to do... But we might take some inspiration: -DDP (easy for Sven) :-) -grid style client/server easy setup/deployment/control for casual developers ...

Cheers,

Cedrick

...

Le 17 mai 2014 à 13:13, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> a écrit :

I don't get why C is not old / deprecated / obsolete . Afterall its as old as Smalltalk

Who really uses modern languages ?

C - 1972

Python - 1991

C++ - 1983

Pascal - 1970

.NET - 2002

Lisp - 1958

Java - 1995

Ruby - 1995

Perl - 1987

Visual Basic - 1991

Javascript - 1995

Objective C- 1983

PHP - 1995

The vast majority of all popular languages out there are at least 20 years old. Thats ancient history. They are not old, they are dinosaurs. Even Clojure is 7 years old.

The problem I see here is that the vast majority of things people are going to like in Pharo on a basic level are Smalltalk features. Implementation wise Pharo has improved a lot of things, added new stuff etc etc. But if you take a look at for example Python back in 1991 and you compare it with a recent version of Python you will find tons of diffirences. Yet its still Python.

Actually its impossible to run a hello world of an old python (anything previous to version 3) that will run in the recent Python. Cause they changed print "hello World" to print( "hello World") , we are talking here about fundamental changes.

Personally I don't see how Pharo being 100% Smalltalk makes it unable or difficult to implement super modern and efficient new features. Languages and Software is not written in stone, it continuously evolves and improves or else people stop using it. Vim was created back in 1991 people still find awesome, modern, extremely powerful.

this is from Ruby's website -> "Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming." Ruby has the right to be called Smalltalk-inspired. because thats what it is.

You got every right to describe Pharo any way you like but for me Pharo is "a modern implementation of Smalltalk. A visual environment for easy direct live coding" .

...

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Hilaire Fernandes <hilaire.fernandes@gmail.com> wrote:

Le 16/05/2014 20:18, phil@highoctane.be a écrit :

...

Back to the future after 30 years of spinning your wheels -------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanting to code at the speed of tought? Wishing the machine was your friend and not a roadblock? Want to burn cash as slow as possible while maximizing your output?

If so, get a copy of Pharo! It is not your (grand) daddy's Smalltalk!

That's why I understand this argument about not advertising Smalltalk in Pharo.

Whatever we do or say, this huge mass of followers, once they heard Smalltalk they fill their head with red light warning, Smalltalk = old/deprecated/obsolete.

For Pharo willing to socially scale = need to take this in consideration.

Hilaire -- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu

Just to add some fuel to this fire... this is a quote from the summary of the latest LightTable's blog post <http://goo.gl/fTYpJX>: "a smooth interface to the old world so we don't end up sharing a grave with smalltalk" I agree with many things in the post. But they're taking credit for old ideas disguised as the latest innovation. Regards, Esteban A. Maringolo 2014-05-17 8:13 GMT-03:00 kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>:

I don't get why C is not old / deprecated / obsolete . Afterall its as old as Smalltalk

Who really uses modern languages ?

C - 1972

Python - 1991

C++ - 1983

Pascal - 1970

.NET - 2002

Lisp - 1958

Java - 1995

Ruby - 1995

Perl - 1987

Visual Basic - 1991

Javascript - 1995

Objective C- 1983

PHP - 1995

The vast majority of all popular languages out there are at least 20 years old. Thats ancient history. They are not old, they are dinosaurs. Even Clojure is 7 years old.

The problem I see here is that the vast majority of things people are going to like in Pharo on a basic level are Smalltalk features. Implementation wise Pharo has improved a lot of things, added new stuff etc etc. But if you take a look at for example Python back in 1991 and you compare it with a recent version of Python you will find tons of diffirences. Yet its still Python.

Actually its impossible to run a hello world of an old python (anything previous to version 3) that will run in the recent Python. Cause they changed print "hello World" to print( "hello World") , we are talking here about fundamental changes.

Personally I don't see how Pharo being 100% Smalltalk makes it unable or difficult to implement super modern and efficient new features. Languages and Software is not written in stone, it continuously evolves and improves or else people stop using it. Vim was created back in 1991 people still find awesome, modern, extremely powerful.

this is from Ruby's website -> "Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming." Ruby has the right to be called Smalltalk-inspired. because thats what it is.

You got every right to describe Pharo any way you like but for me Pharo is "a modern implementation of Smalltalk. A visual environment for easy direct live coding" .

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Hilaire Fernandes <hilaire.fernandes@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Le 16/05/2014 20:18, phil@highoctane.be a écrit :

...

Back to the future after 30 years of spinning your wheels -------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanting to code at the speed of tought? Wishing the machine was your friend and not a roadblock? Want to burn cash as slow as possible while maximizing your output?

If so, get a copy of Pharo! It is not your (grand) daddy's Smalltalk!

That's why I understand this argument about not advertising Smalltalk in Pharo.

Whatever we do or say, this huge mass of followers, once they heard Smalltalk they fill their head with red light warning, Smalltalk = old/deprecated/obsolete.

For Pharo willing to socially scale = need to take this in consideration.

Hilaire -- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu

Yes, this is all about marketing. But I think being smalltalk is a marketing plus. It was for me. Who are these people who will run a mile at the mention of smalltalk? And if they hate smalltalk so much, are they not going to be disappointed when they find out that pharo is just another version of the dead language they have always shunned? -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4759218.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

2014-05-15 17:26 GMT-03:00 Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu>:

On 15 May 2014, at 22:13, kmo <voxkmp@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Yes, this is all about marketing. But I think being smalltalk is a marketing plus. It was for me. Who are these people who will run a mile at the mention of smalltalk? And if they hate smalltalk so much, are they not going to be disappointed when they find out that pharo is just another version of the dead language they have always shunned?

Let's say that the people who know Smalltalk will come anyway, because they understand the lineage. There is no real point in preaching to those who are already converted.

All the previous dialects were advertised as "a new Smalltalk dialect" (from IBM, Cincom, you name it). This time we could, at least, try to advertise it differently.

You would be surprised how little young people know about older languages and technologies, there is a reason why everything is being reinvented all the time ;-)

I'm not surprised about that, I'm scared. Esteban A. Maringolo

To me, “Smalltalk” is everything. Take anything away (language, tools, image, or library) and it’s not nearly as interesting. On May 16, 2014, at 12:04 PM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com> wrote:

Esteban A. Maringolo wrote

...

All the previous dialects were advertised as "a new Smalltalk dialect" ... This time we could, at least, try to advertise it differently.

+1. I think that delaying the Smalltalk conversation a bit a la Clojure might be the sweet spot. A good time to mention it might be in describing the language, since it's obviously Smalltalk. I'll reiterate that I strongly feel that the language - which has always been the least interesting thing - should be introduced /last/, after the environment - which is the real blue plane idea here - and the libraries, which are of practical importance.

----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4759290.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

+1 Lorenzo Schiavina -----Messaggio originale----- Da: Pharo-dev [mailto:pharo-dev-bounces@lists.pharo.org] Per conto di kmo Inviato: giovedì 15 maggio 2014 20:03 A: pharo-dev@lists.pharo.org Oggetto: Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference Looking at the new pharo website (it’s great, by the way), I found I was more upset than I thought I would be by the total absence of the s-word. Perhaps lots of people think smalltalk is a dead language but that’s not the only view of smalltalk that people have out there. I came to pharo looking for a new, better way of developing applications. I knew from reading about the history of computing that smalltalk was the purest object oriented language. I knew that it had pioneered many advanced ideas in program development. I knew that it was so far ahead of its time that other languages were still hobbling along behind it trying to catch up. I knew that java and C# were constantly trying to be more smalltalk-like. So I looked for a smalltalk – ideally an open source smalltalk that I could use on Linux. And so I came to pharo. If someone had told me that pharo was not smalltalk, I would not have been interested, I would have though pharo was just a niche product (like Rebol, say) - something that might simply fade away with no history behind it. And I’m sure there are other people like me out there who also have heard of the smalltalk mystique. This heritage is something to be proud of. So why hide what pharo is? It’s not smalltalk’s reputation as /dead/ that I think is likely to put people off. It’s more smalltalks’s reputation as an academic’s language, used to investigate abstruse computer science problems, but unsuitable for mundane day-to-day development. The sort of language that cannot produce a stand-alone executable (a myth - but pharo could do with a deployment wizard of some kind). The sort of language that can produce incredible data visualisations (Roassal) but is unable to put up a decent data entry screen (Spec). (Sorry, that's unfair but I could not resist it! ) Rather than hide the smalltalk origins of pharo, I think they should be shouted from the rooftops. I would add something like this to the web page. */Pharo is an alive-and-kicking, developer-focused, version of smalltalk – the most beautiful idea in the history of computing./* Just my two cents. By the way, I really don't like the idea of using /agile /as a description of pharo. Agile means almost nothing now - it's just a management buzzword for nothing in particular. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4759204.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

There is the liveliness aspect. Today we get this with React for example on the web. That's also what Morphic provides (albeit the internals may be better, it is still great at the core) with the stepping methods. I wouldn't go down the Agile road as this is looking more and more like a religion and not driven by pragmatic considerations. For me, Pharo provides the shortest path between ideas and manifestations of those ideas. What makes Pharo nice is that people are taking charge and pushing forward. The willingness to make things move forward, the relentless progress (look at a 1.3 for example vs a 3.0), tools that are emerging, integration with mainstream systems are all aspects that make Pharo great. No such thing in Squeak these days. Of course there are rough edges. Maybe this Pharo thing is the pioneer's best friend. It pushes on the most important motivational source in people: the desire to use it. That's the #1 consideration for me: I do want to use Pharo, no matter the quirks. It is like a drug. Phil On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 7:47 AM, Hilaire Fernandes < hilaire.fernandes@gmail.com> wrote:

Morning,

Livecoding is nice. I also like the idea of using the adjective "Agile" as it conveys coolness in the today developers mind: "Pharo, an agile programming environment and language for agile developers."

Hilaire

Le 13/05/2014 17:45, Craig Latta a écrit :

...

Let's put more energy into a concise and intriguing description. I think the primary concepts are programming, dynamism and messaging. The word "livecoding" seems to resonate these days. If we're going to repeat a word twenty times, I would choose that one. :) It has a nice ring

-- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu

[recent Pharo accomplishments]

No such thing in Squeak these days.

That was an unnecessary dig, and totally uninteresting to newcomers (not to mention false). Also, Pharo progress doesn't come at the expense of progress anywhere else, so such comments are a complete waste of your time and energy. If you feel the need to slag another project to make yourself feel better about Pharo, you have deeper problems. You were better off with tunnel vision. :) -C -- Craig Latta www.netjam.org +31 6 2757 7177 (SMS ok) + 1 415 287 3547 (no SMS)

On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language that is Smalltalk-inspired.

We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).

nice joke Talking of Smalltalk-inspired…. Ruby is that, and is very successful BTW So, yeah, we are aware that it would be incredibly lame to try to fool ourselves and the world by trying to sell the idea that Pharo is not a Smalltalk.

Fair enough. But to me the distinction is like Scheme and Common Lisp. They're dialects of Lisp. Other example is Racket, that tries to sell itself as a superior Lisp/Scheme, as TypeScript tries to sell itself as a superset of JavaScript :) To me, they're all Lisp. As Pharo IS Smalltalk. Smalltalk as a moniker, not as a particular spec. Regards! Esteban A. Maringolo 2014-04-28 15:24 GMT-03:00 Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com>:

Hi,

I do not claim that Pharo does not look like a Smalltalk now. It does as it shares quite a bit with the model. But, I do claim that it already has distinctive characteristics that make it go away from a "classic" Smalltalk. And there will be more and more in the future.

So, what is better as a communication strategy: - to say that Pharo is "a Smalltalk with traits, modular compiler, slots and moldable debugger, ... (more to come in this list)", or - to say that Pharo "is a modern Smalltalk-inspired system?" ?

We are not fooling anyone. We simply state that while we respect everything that Smalltalk stands for, Pharo will not be bound to it. This is not being disrespectful, it is simply creating the premise to look at how else we can invent the future. And there is so much to invent there.

Doru

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:56 PM, Sebastian Sastre <sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote:

...

On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language that is Smalltalk-inspired.

We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).

nice joke

Talking of Smalltalk-inspired…. Ruby is that, and is very successful BTW

So, yeah, we are aware that it would be incredibly lame to try to fool ourselves and the world by trying to sell the idea that Pharo is not a Smalltalk.

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

For some reason, you are under the impression that I focus on the Smalltalk community. I have no intention of going there. Our goal is precisely the opposite - the developer community at large. It is precisely for this reason that I will keep on saying that Pharo is a modern language and environment that people should look at and that happens to be inspired by Smalltalk. You see, when something is dead (and this is what Smalltalk is in the mind of everyone else that is not in our inner circle) you need a miracle. Miracles are hard to produce, but magic isn't. We are actually pretty good at magic, so I will pick a game in which magic will do just fine. Hence, Pharo is Pharo and all the magic that comes with it. Doru On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Sebastian Sastre < sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote:

On Apr 28, 2014, at 3:24 PM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

So, what is better as a communication strategy: - to say that Pharo is "a Smalltalk with traits, modular compiler, slots and moldable debugger, ... (more to come in this list)", or - to say that Pharo "is a modern Smalltalk-inspired system?" ?

The first pitch totally sucks of course but for the sake of getting to your point, it depends on who the audience is, right?

If you’re trying too hard to differentiate yourself from other Smalltalk dialects, then *“modern Smalltalk-inspired system” *might have a chance.

But what that chance might lead you to? What’s the best thing that can happen with that strategy?

That you steal some market space for your preferred dialect in a zero-sum game of an already very small community?

Okay, let’s talk about the opposite direction. A non-zero-sum game. What about trying to connect with a wider audience? You’ll need something that serves as foundation to build on top of. Something inspiring.

Now let’s do the numbers..

A) What’s the size of the whole smalltalk community? what you can have from it? 2%? 10%? 20% conversion? let’s say you get 80% because you’re amazing beyond disbelief.

B) What’s the size of the whole dynamic technology community? if you get 0.001% from it you multiplied the smalltalkers on the surface of this planet by x100 times

So what strategy really deserves your effort?

For me it’s pretty clear where the winner and looser communication strategy resides, I actually saw it in action and it wasn’t even hard. I also assume we’re for a winner strategy but I actually have no idea on how Pharo is managing its branding and Smalltalk has still to prove to itself it can actually market itself properly

-- www.tudorgirba.com "Every thing has its own flow"

On Apr 28, 2014, at 1:58 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:

very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website.

Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

Is not on video but for what’s worth, I don’t know from were you take that impression but I’m pretty sure that what you described in the previous paragraph was not the impression the audience got from my talk. “Dead / extinct” for the industry is a matter of nailing it when you expose talent and the tools that can expand it. Can you do cool projects with it? if you do then that’s your place, good for you, go for more, and give something in return. The hard work of this community is continuing the legacy of an inspiring legend. A legend that inspires them when you take the time and effort to break with self-serving tasks and start to expose it instead

As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this "sorry that I am dead" mentality to them.

On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:57 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:

Sebastian you are absolutely correct, I did not understand that he was referring to a stereotype that ruby community has about smalltalk. I apologize.

Is important that we talk these things so we understand how to break stereotypes that aren’t doing any good. So thanks for expressing it

kilon alios wrote

Watched it once more and now it clear that he presented Smalltalk in a very fair manner

Yes, it was very fair and a nice bridge between the Ruby and Smalltalk communities i.e. not too elitist. kilon alios wrote

I also completely agree with his criticism on smalltalk of... not playing well with others

I think this has always been a red herring. How exactly does Ruby "play well with others"? Wth does that mean? If we're talking about e.g. native windows, Ruby has bindings to GUI libraries because it has a community big enough that is interested-in-that enough to write them. In fact IIRC, someone wrote GTK bindings for Squeak/Pharo, but there was little user interest and they took their code elsewhere. There's no difference in that regard. Another barrier of course, is that binding to external UI libraries in a way violates the turtles-all-the-way-down principle of Smalltalk and would only be a kludge until you could replace them with an implementation that was part of the live, uniform system. Although if not being satisfied with a system that is complicated beyond human comprehension is "not playing well with others", perhaps you should reconsider your friendships ha ha ;) ----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756895.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Esteban A. Maringolo wrote

Plays well with "choose your favorite text editor" (Sublime, Vim, etc.) and IDEs (RubyMine, etc.), with source control systems (any file based system), with unix in general (several cli commands), has binding for any major/mainstream library* (databases, network, etc.).

But again these boil down to community size/interest - To use "your favorite text editor", Craig Latta serves Smalltalk via WebDav [1], but who has jumped at this opportunity? - source control - now that there is community interest, progress on git support has been moving ahead rapidly with minimal resources - unix in general - with FFI and OSProcess, what can't you do? Are we talking about the lack of cool Ruby backtick syntax? While definitely cool, that special-purpose syntax is the kind of cognitive load Smalltalk overcomes. All those little syntactical twists and turns to remember lead away from "syntax on a T-shirt" to manuals with hundreds of pages - bindings - again, obviously just a question of community size and interest So the "play well with others" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no bindings... At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have those bindings either. [1] http://thiscontext.com/2011/06/09/my-favorite-text-editor-editing-a-spoon-we... ----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756900.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

The problem is that sometimes we overestimate how important "play well with others" is. In python we have the cpython vs jython / ironpython . Cpython is the popular choice which is python implemented in C. Ironpython is a compiler of python for .NET and jython a compiler for Java. The advantage of using .NET and especially Java libraries out of the box is obvious. Yet Jython and Ironpython are hardly popular , definitely less popular than Pharo. It seems that coders suffer on what I call "code narcissism syndrome" , it goes like this Jython : well I am python written in Java and I can use any Java library you want out of the box and even C libraries like Cpython coder : Wow cool Cpython : yes but all my libraries are written in python do you really want to mess with Java libraries ? coder: hmm, eh, no not really So my experience is that if you have something you really enjoy even though it may lack features you would find on a bigger system, you will still prefer to use that. Because there is a reason why you checked it out in the first place, you were really unhappy with the big system. So I am full supporter of the idea that pharo should make git integration, as well CLI , and other tools easier for those that want to use such external tools. But we should not worry too much about it. Afterall people change or try new languages because they are not satisfied with what they have already in their system. They want a fresh new approach to things. I was interested in pharo because python lacks a real python IDE. Most IDEs that Python uses are IDEs that follow "work well with others" concept but that concept sacrifices the advantages of having a closely integrated system like Pharo has. On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 10:42 AM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar@gmail.com>wrote:

On 29 April 2014 03:48, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com> wrote:

...

Esteban A. Maringolo wrote

...

Plays well with "choose your favorite text editor" (Sublime, Vim, etc.) and IDEs (RubyMine, etc.), with source control systems (any file based system), with unix in general (several cli commands), has binding for any major/mainstream library* (databases, network, etc.).

But again these boil down to community size/interest - To use "your favorite text editor", Craig Latta serves Smalltalk via WebDav [1], but who has jumped at this opportunity? - source control - now that there is community interest, progress on git support has been moving ahead rapidly with minimal resources - unix in general - with FFI and OSProcess, what can't you do? Are we talking about the lack of cool Ruby backtick syntax? While definitely cool, that special-purpose syntax is the kind of cognitive load Smalltalk overcomes. All those little syntactical twists and turns to remember lead away from "syntax on a T-shirt" to manuals with hundreds of pages - bindings - again, obviously just a question of community size and interest

Backtick syntax is largely bogus anyway. It's a minor string interpolation trick with a special evaluation strategy. And I entirely agree that Ruby has (way, WAY) too much syntax.

...

So the "play well with others" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no bindings... At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have those bindings either.

That's largely true, in the sense that someone needs to grab a shovel to dig that trench.

But if you start out with an external text editor, with an external version control system, with (only) stdout/stderr/stdin, you end up building a different system than if you're already in an insular environment and want/need to learn to "play well with others". Ruby plays well with other - interfaces well with external systems - precisely because it didn't have that integrated environment. Now sure, back in 1976 Smalltalk didn't either, but we're here in 2014, 18 years after Squeak budded off Apple Smalltalk: a tightly integrated environment is what we started from.

frank

...

[1]

http://thiscontext.com/2011/06/09/my-favorite-text-editor-editing-a-spoon-we...

...

----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context:

http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756900....

...

Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

2014-04-28 23:48 GMT-03:00 Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com>:

Esteban A. Maringolo wrote

...

Plays well with "choose your favorite text editor" (Sublime, Vim, etc.) and IDEs (RubyMine, etc.), with source control systems (any file based system), with unix in general (several cli commands), has binding for any major/mainstream library* (databases, network, etc.).

But again these boil down to community size/interest - To use "your favorite text editor", Craig Latta serves Smalltalk via WebDav [1], but who has jumped at this opportunity? - source control - now that there is community interest, progress on git support has been moving ahead rapidly with minimal resources

This is my point, who uses WebDAV as its file support? It is a "workaround" to enable file based development. A VERY CLEVER one, but still.

- unix in general - with FFI and OSProcess, what can't you do? Are we talking about the lack of cool Ruby backtick syntax? While definitely cool, that special-purpose syntax is the kind of cognitive load Smalltalk overcomes. All those little syntactical twists and turns to remember lead away from "syntax on a T-shirt" to manuals with hundreds of pages

I'm not talking about syntax, and I wouldn't trade Smalltalk syntax for anything else. FFI and OSProcess IS NOT unix interoperability, are ways to get "out" of the image (the island in Byte's '81 cover). Think about this... Windows and Unix/Linux culture. One started from an "all windows" architecture, whilst the other was the other way around. Windows is still thriving to get a command line culture for many of its products. Only in the last years they've been adding more and more features through command line, because of the demand of scripting and who knows what else. And maybe that "command line" need comes from people coming from the unix world. And, to me, this is "playing well with others", not being able to call "external" programs via any mechanism. I think that one big part of the success of Mac notebooks in the developer community, is the fact is has an underlying unix. Oversimplified example: You don't need a version of gzip with bindings to tar in order to have both working together.

- bindings - again, obviously just a question of community size and interest

Here I agree. That's why I asked if you would recommend Pharo today to somebody who has current needs.

So the "play well with others" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no bindings...

I have to agree with you about the self-fulfilling prophecy.

At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have those bindings either.

Ruby got to be what it is because of Rails. Because of 37signals. Pharo doesn't have that. It could have happened with Seaside. But it didn't. It worries me that when an outsider pinpoints so clearly what are our weak points we can't think outside of our box. Proportions aside, it remembers me when you talk with a 100% minded PHP programmer about something, and they can only think inside of their box, and instead reply that you can do OO in PHP and you don't need an interactive debugger.:) Having all that said, I still bet on Pharo. :) Regards, Esteban A. Maringolo

I did a simple test, googled for "smalltalk jobs", and the fourth result was a link to this page: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsSmalltalkDead, which contains historical info and some rants about the ups and downs of Smalltalk use. But had a link to a Paul Graham's essay I read many years ago, which is still valuable, and helps getting a better insight: http://paulgraham.com/popular.html Best regards! -- Esteban. ps: I did a search for "pharo jobs" and only found a reference to Netstyle's search :) Esteban A. Maringolo 2014-04-29 14:14 GMT-03:00 Sebastian Sastre <sebastian@flowingconcept.com>:

On Apr 29, 2014, at 2:08 PM, Ben Coman <btc@openInWorld.com> wrote:

Why do some people prefer rock music and others classical music? Its about the patterns they know. Our brains naturally try to cram each experience into a pattern it already knows. I remember when I used to dislike Jazz music - I couldn't "understand it". Then I started to listen to Jamiroquai a lot - a funky Jazz/Techno hybrid. Then later I found that I had learned to like Jazz - I could now "understand it" and know its patterns - but I needed a stepping stone to get there. It might be that some starts using Pharo with their favourite text editor as a comfort factor, as a stepping stone, and then migrates over time to the standard editors. So that is a path to draw in new users - but of course that takes effort to set up. cheers -ben

This is interesting, you’re talking of acquired taste here.

Things that needs time and context and repetition to sink in.

What’s also interesting is Jamiroquai, because he’s work was your bridge to Jazz.

He did the inception.

Now the question is this:

Who in the industry is functioning as our Jamiroquai?

Pharo := Smalltalk ++ On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:

On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

...

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really- you-should-learn-smalltalk

In this thread and many others there is this debate as to whether Pharo is a Smalltalk or is Smalltalk Inspired.

I find the Smalltalk Inspired arguments to be unpersuasive. To be Smalltalk Inspired is to say that you are not a Smalltalk. It is to say that Pharo is not Smalltalk but inspired by it.

I find that reasoning patently false.

First of all everything in Pharo begins from a Smalltalk image. It comes from Squeak Smalltalk which comes from Apple Smalltalk. etc.

Pharo has an isA relationship with Smalltalk, not an isInspiredBy relationship. It may change and add features, but as has been stated before, Smalltalk isn't a static idea or artifact. It has always been a dynamic live environment in which to change itself into something it believed to be better. By removing features and by growing them.

Smalltalk (an instance of SmalltalkImage), SmalltalkImage, SmalltalkImageTest, SmalltalkEditingState are all part of the Pharo Smalltalk image.

The Pharo image is a Smalltalk image. It says so inside the image itself.

Where are we hosting are source code? Would that be SmalltalkHub? Lets see something. http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo

Okay, Pharo might be doing things that would break compatibility with other Smalltalks. And that causes some people pain and grief. However that does not make Pharo not a Smalltalk. Was Smalltalk 76 constrained by backward compatibility with Smalltalk 72? Or Smalltalk 80 with either Smalltalk 76 or 72? No!

Is it a requirement of Pharo to be constrained by other Smalltalk implementations in order to still be a Smalltalk. No!

And then there is the argument of the outside worlds perception of Smalltalk. Since when does the perception of the outside world change whether or not Pharo is a Smalltalk? If the outside world changed their mind and decided Smalltalk is wonderful, does Pharo then all of the sudden become a Smalltalk? Ugh!

We are who we are. Our roots are our roots. Pharo should be happy and proud to be a Smalltalk. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of innovation. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of inventing the future.

We have decided to be marketing driven. Marketing is important. But marketing should determine who we are. And we should engage in disingenuous marketing practice trying to hide our roots or who we are.

Why do we things distancing ourselves from Smalltalk advantages us? Just because there are lots of uneducated people who have the wrong idea about Smalltalk. Clojure embraced its Lisp heritage and is thriving. Lisp has every bit as much baggage.

This talk which inspired this thread called Pharo as Smalltalk. He said, Pharo Smalltalk throughout the presentation. So in the mind of the presenter and now in the mind of the audience at the conference and of the video, Pharo is a Smalltalk. So now are we to go about re-educating all these people that Pharo is not a Smalltalk but is rather Smalltalk Inspired?

We don't require the outside world's permission. We don't need their approval. We would like to have a reasonable and sufficient number of them to catch the Pharo Smalltalk vision and become a part of the family. Do we really desire everybody. No. Do we desire those people who are so closed minded that the mention of Smalltalk closes their mind because of their ignorance. I don't think so.

Smalltalk is different. Pharo is Smalltalk and is different. There will be those who don't like it because of the baggage they bring, not the baggage we bring. And that is okay. All of us think different. People need to embrace what empowers them and quit complaining about what empowers somebody else. We need to embrace empowering people who understand Smalltalk not the people who don't get it for whatever reason. Let those people go and be empowered somewhere else. We and they will both be better off.

Feel free to shred and destroy my arguments. I am proud to use Smalltalk. And currently Pharo is the Smalltalk I am choosing to use. Currently I am studying C. A C library is required for my project and in order to use Pharo and use this library, I need sufficient C skills.

My opinion unapologetically.

And if the powers that be who are in charge of Pharo decide that Smalltalk (in name) is baggage and Pharo is not Smalltalk. And that marketing Pharo as Smalltalk is bad. Then please be honest and change all references in the image of Smalltalk to Pharo. Also change SmalltalkHub to PharoHub or SmalltalkInspiredHub.

If if not, be sincere and embrace Pharo Smalltalk.

Long live Smalltalk.

Jimmie

In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80. But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014. Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 1976. ... And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is not K&R, or C89, C90 or C99? Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with Python 2.x which is dominant? Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this era to do things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity in the image. We need the image to be clean. We need to learn the lessons we as Smalltalker's have learned in the last 24 years and apply them to Pharo Smalltalk. And I believe that is much of what Pharo is attempting to do. Noel in his talk said that Smalltalk doesn't play well with others. And with Pharo it still isn't as easy as in other languages like Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. But with NativeBoost we have a tool which enables us to do much. And NativeBoost isn't finished. I believe when NativeBoost is fully mature and the vm/image has sufficiently changed to enable us. We will have one of the best plays with others well stories. I know in the app I am writing, NativeBoost's current condition struggled with my library. It often crashed. This library has to deal with a C Thread. Which is why I am spending my current time studying C. Whether or not the Smalltalk Inspired crowd likes it, the moment some else declares that Pharo is a Smalltalk the Smalltalk Inspired marketing is tanked. The cat is out of the bag. The Reddit thread demonstrates this. People went to the new website. They read the current marketing and were confused. What is this Pharo thing. And in the thread it comes out that Pharo is a Smalltalk. Lets make that clear up front. Then lets define what it means to be Pharo Smalltalk. 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. 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. 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. Smalltalk has a wonderful heritage. It is not without its issues. However the good of Smalltalk is enormous. Take a look at this chart http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/ Smalltalk is a big influence in the history of programming. This is something worth being a part of. Be proud of it. Pharo needs to define what one vision of a modern Smalltalk is. Let us educate people of what our vision for Pharo Smalltalk is. And guess what folks its 2014. Before long it wont be. And before long the vision of Pharo 2014 will no longer be any more modern than Smalltalk 80. But neither Smalltalk 80 nor Pharo 3.0 constrain what it means to be Smalltalk. Smalltalk inspires vision and inspires people to do things which change the present and the future. Lets build on that heritage and take it forward. What does a modern Smalltalk snapshot 2014 mean. Lets educate and communicate. Others (non-Smalltalkers) don't get to define what Smalltalk is. We do. Let us learn from them what they think Smalltalk is. Where they are wrong, educate them. Where they are right and we have an issue. Let's learn a lesson and improve our Smalltalk. Computer science/art is young. This is a journey. Lets make it a good one. Jimmie On 04/30/2014 11:12 AM, phil@highoctane.be wrote:

Pharo := Smalltalk ++

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com <mailto:jlhouchin@gmail.com>> wrote:

On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

In this thread and many others there is this debate as to whether Pharo is a Smalltalk or is Smalltalk Inspired.

I find the Smalltalk Inspired arguments to be unpersuasive. To be Smalltalk Inspired is to say that you are not a Smalltalk. It is to say that Pharo is not Smalltalk but inspired by it.

I find that reasoning patently false.

First of all everything in Pharo begins from a Smalltalk image. It comes from Squeak Smalltalk which comes from Apple Smalltalk. etc.

Pharo has an isA relationship with Smalltalk, not an isInspiredBy relationship. It may change and add features, but as has been stated before, Smalltalk isn't a static idea or artifact. It has always been a dynamic live environment in which to change itself into something it believed to be better. By removing features and by growing them.

Smalltalk (an instance of SmalltalkImage), SmalltalkImage, SmalltalkImageTest, SmalltalkEditingState are all part of the Pharo Smalltalk image.

The Pharo image is a Smalltalk image. It says so inside the image itself.

Where are we hosting are source code? Would that be SmalltalkHub? Lets see something. http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo <http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#%21/%7EPharo>

Okay, Pharo might be doing things that would break compatibility with other Smalltalks. And that causes some people pain and grief. However that does not make Pharo not a Smalltalk. Was Smalltalk 76 constrained by backward compatibility with Smalltalk 72? Or Smalltalk 80 with either Smalltalk 76 or 72? No!

Is it a requirement of Pharo to be constrained by other Smalltalk implementations in order to still be a Smalltalk. No!

And then there is the argument of the outside worlds perception of Smalltalk. Since when does the perception of the outside world change whether or not Pharo is a Smalltalk? If the outside world changed their mind and decided Smalltalk is wonderful, does Pharo then all of the sudden become a Smalltalk? Ugh!

We are who we are. Our roots are our roots. Pharo should be happy and proud to be a Smalltalk. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of innovation. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of inventing the future.

We have decided to be marketing driven. Marketing is important. But marketing should determine who we are. And we should engage in disingenuous marketing practice trying to hide our roots or who we are.

Why do we things distancing ourselves from Smalltalk advantages us? Just because there are lots of uneducated people who have the wrong idea about Smalltalk. Clojure embraced its Lisp heritage and is thriving. Lisp has every bit as much baggage.

This talk which inspired this thread called Pharo as Smalltalk. He said, Pharo Smalltalk throughout the presentation. So in the mind of the presenter and now in the mind of the audience at the conference and of the video, Pharo is a Smalltalk. So now are we to go about re-educating all these people that Pharo is not a Smalltalk but is rather Smalltalk Inspired?

We don't require the outside world's permission. We don't need their approval. We would like to have a reasonable and sufficient number of them to catch the Pharo Smalltalk vision and become a part of the family. Do we really desire everybody. No. Do we desire those people who are so closed minded that the mention of Smalltalk closes their mind because of their ignorance. I don't think so.

Smalltalk is different. Pharo is Smalltalk and is different. There will be those who don't like it because of the baggage they bring, not the baggage we bring. And that is okay. All of us think different. People need to embrace what empowers them and quit complaining about what empowers somebody else. We need to embrace empowering people who understand Smalltalk not the people who don't get it for whatever reason. Let those people go and be empowered somewhere else. We and they will both be better off.

Feel free to shred and destroy my arguments. I am proud to use Smalltalk. And currently Pharo is the Smalltalk I am choosing to use. Currently I am studying C. A C library is required for my project and in order to use Pharo and use this library, I need sufficient C skills.

My opinion unapologetically.

And if the powers that be who are in charge of Pharo decide that Smalltalk (in name) is baggage and Pharo is not Smalltalk. And that marketing Pharo as Smalltalk is bad. Then please be honest and change all references in the image of Smalltalk to Pharo. Also change SmalltalkHub to PharoHub or SmalltalkInspiredHub.

If if not, be sincere and embrace Pharo Smalltalk.

Long live Smalltalk.

Jimmie

But that is the point. This kind of marketing is false. It denies who we are. As soon as they look at Pharo. Learn to use and then learn that Pharo is a Smalltalk and that we are liars. Did keeping silent about Pharo help in the Reddit thread. No. Did the current marketing explain well what Pharo is. No. Read the thread. People were confused. And regardless of the marketing attempt, the fact of Pharo being a Smalltalk did not remain suppressed. So therefore, those who were closed minded against Smalltalk have then been alerted, and they can close their minds. Attempting to not make it plain was an abject failure. People who understand the value of Smalltalk and of a modern open source implementation will come. I guess none of the commercial Smalltalks are alive? Nobody knows of them. They are going broke? Gemstone, VisualWorks, ... What is this new thing that people are using? Clojure based on Lisp. Not new. Python 23 years old. Lua 21 Ruby 19 Clojure based on Lisp but adding modern functional features disproves any thought that an old language with lots of baggage can't attract new users. From the Clojure home page. """Clojure is a dialect of Lisp""" They embrace their heritage and are better for it. They also detail their value proposition and being a Lisp is part of it. I am all agreeable to attracting people to our community. But falseness isn't the way. Not everybody is closed minded and ignorant. Those that are we can wait until they are not. But Pharo has to offer people the proper value proposition. When it does, I believe it will attract sincere people. When the value of Pharo meets the needs of the people, it will attact the appropriate people. But until then, we can market it however we want and they will not care. Right now Pharo is working hard to reach that point that it can offer them something they will value. For some it already does. For others not yet. That not yet, it a bigger obstacle than Pharo being marketed as a Smalltalk and telling the truth. We need to embrace being a Smalltalk and sell our value proposition in terms that mean something to somebody who doesn't already get Smalltalk. We failed at that. Too vague, too ambiguous. It confused some of the Reddit people. People to whom we are supposedly intending to attract and market to. Jimmie On 04/30/2014 01:22 PM, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:

Again… you are missing the point. nobody here doubts Pharo is a Smalltalk. nobody outside our small world believes Smalltalk is alive.

And yes… you can argue all what you want. But you are scratching where it does not itch.

We choose not to *market* Pharo as a Smalltalk, because each time someone outside our small world hear about Smalltalk believes that is a long time dead language. No matter how much effort you put into explain that is not true, people will not believe it. And people is always more willing to try something new than something old (except in the case of wines and fine alcohols, of course). So… we prefer to track people to our community and let them notice wat WE ALL KNOW: Smalltalk is not dead, and Pharo is a proof of that.

Esteban

On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:07, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com <mailto:jlhouchin@gmail.com>> wrote:

...

In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80.

But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014. Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 1976. ...

And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is not K&R, or C89, C90 or C99? Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with Python 2.x which is dominant?

Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this era to do things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity in the image. We need the image to be clean. We need to learn the lessons we as Smalltalker's have learned in the last 24 years and apply them to Pharo Smalltalk. And I believe that is much of what Pharo is attempting to do.

Noel in his talk said that Smalltalk doesn't play well with others. And with Pharo it still isn't as easy as in other languages like Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. But with NativeBoost we have a tool which enables us to do much. And NativeBoost isn't finished. I believe when NativeBoost is fully mature and the vm/image has sufficiently changed to enable us. We will have one of the best plays with others well stories.

I know in the app I am writing, NativeBoost's current condition struggled with my library. It often crashed. This library has to deal with a C Thread. Which is why I am spending my current time studying C.

Whether or not the Smalltalk Inspired crowd likes it, the moment some else declares that Pharo is a Smalltalk the Smalltalk Inspired marketing is tanked. The cat is out of the bag.

The Reddit thread demonstrates this. People went to the new website. They read the current marketing and were confused. What is this Pharo thing. And in the thread it comes out that Pharo is a Smalltalk. Lets make that clear up front. Then lets define what it means to be Pharo Smalltalk.

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. 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. 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.

Smalltalk has a wonderful heritage. It is not without its issues. However the good of Smalltalk is enormous. Take a look at this chart http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/ Smalltalk is a big influence in the history of programming. This is something worth being a part of. Be proud of it.

Pharo needs to define what one vision of a modern Smalltalk is. Let us educate people of what our vision for Pharo Smalltalk is. And guess what folks its 2014. Before long it wont be. And before long the vision of Pharo 2014 will no longer be any more modern than Smalltalk 80. But neither Smalltalk 80 nor Pharo 3.0 constrain what it means to be Smalltalk. Smalltalk inspires vision and inspires people to do things which change the present and the future. Lets build on that heritage and take it forward. What does a modern Smalltalk snapshot 2014 mean. Lets educate and communicate. Others (non-Smalltalkers) don't get to define what Smalltalk is. We do.

Let us learn from them what they think Smalltalk is. Where they are wrong, educate them. Where they are right and we have an issue. Let's learn a lesson and improve our Smalltalk.

Computer science/art is young. This is a journey. Lets make it a good one.

Jimmie

On 04/30/2014 11:12 AM, phil@highoctane.be wrote:

...

Pharo := Smalltalk ++

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com <mailto:jlhouchin@gmail.com>> wrote:

On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

In this thread and many others there is this debate as to whether Pharo is a Smalltalk or is Smalltalk Inspired.

I find the Smalltalk Inspired arguments to be unpersuasive. To be Smalltalk Inspired is to say that you are not a Smalltalk. It is to say that Pharo is not Smalltalk but inspired by it.

I find that reasoning patently false.

First of all everything in Pharo begins from a Smalltalk image. It comes from Squeak Smalltalk which comes from Apple Smalltalk. etc.

Pharo has an isA relationship with Smalltalk, not an isInspiredBy relationship. It may change and add features, but as has been stated before, Smalltalk isn't a static idea or artifact. It has always been a dynamic live environment in which to change itself into something it believed to be better. By removing features and by growing them.

Smalltalk (an instance of SmalltalkImage), SmalltalkImage, SmalltalkImageTest, SmalltalkEditingState are all part of the Pharo Smalltalk image.

The Pharo image is a Smalltalk image. It says so inside the image itself.

Where are we hosting are source code? Would that be SmalltalkHub? Lets see something. http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo <http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#%21/%7EPharo>

Okay, Pharo might be doing things that would break compatibility with other Smalltalks. And that causes some people pain and grief. However that does not make Pharo not a Smalltalk. Was Smalltalk 76 constrained by backward compatibility with Smalltalk 72? Or Smalltalk 80 with either Smalltalk 76 or 72? No!

Is it a requirement of Pharo to be constrained by other Smalltalk implementations in order to still be a Smalltalk. No!

And then there is the argument of the outside worlds perception of Smalltalk. Since when does the perception of the outside world change whether or not Pharo is a Smalltalk? If the outside world changed their mind and decided Smalltalk is wonderful, does Pharo then all of the sudden become a Smalltalk? Ugh!

We are who we are. Our roots are our roots. Pharo should be happy and proud to be a Smalltalk. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of innovation. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of inventing the future.

We have decided to be marketing driven. Marketing is important. But marketing should determine who we are. And we should engage in disingenuous marketing practice trying to hide our roots or who we are.

Why do we things distancing ourselves from Smalltalk advantages us? Just because there are lots of uneducated people who have the wrong idea about Smalltalk. Clojure embraced its Lisp heritage and is thriving. Lisp has every bit as much baggage.

This talk which inspired this thread called Pharo as Smalltalk. He said, Pharo Smalltalk throughout the presentation. So in the mind of the presenter and now in the mind of the audience at the conference and of the video, Pharo is a Smalltalk. So now are we to go about re-educating all these people that Pharo is not a Smalltalk but is rather Smalltalk Inspired?

We don't require the outside world's permission. We don't need their approval. We would like to have a reasonable and sufficient number of them to catch the Pharo Smalltalk vision and become a part of the family. Do we really desire everybody. No. Do we desire those people who are so closed minded that the mention of Smalltalk closes their mind because of their ignorance. I don't think so.

Smalltalk is different. Pharo is Smalltalk and is different. There will be those who don't like it because of the baggage they bring, not the baggage we bring. And that is okay. All of us think different. People need to embrace what empowers them and quit complaining about what empowers somebody else. We need to embrace empowering people who understand Smalltalk not the people who don't get it for whatever reason. Let those people go and be empowered somewhere else. We and they will both be better off.

Feel free to shred and destroy my arguments. I am proud to use Smalltalk. And currently Pharo is the Smalltalk I am choosing to use. Currently I am studying C. A C library is required for my project and in order to use Pharo and use this library, I need sufficient C skills.

My opinion unapologetically.

And if the powers that be who are in charge of Pharo decide that Smalltalk (in name) is baggage and Pharo is not Smalltalk. And that marketing Pharo as Smalltalk is bad. Then please be honest and change all references in the image of Smalltalk to Pharo. Also change SmalltalkHub to PharoHub or SmalltalkInspiredHub.

If if not, be sincere and embrace Pharo Smalltalk.

Long live Smalltalk.

Jimmie

I understand. My apologies for contributing to one of those days. For me that day was while I was reading this thread and watching Doru and Sean arguing with Eliot. It almost made me want to go back to Squeak. Not that I am saying there is anything wrong with Squeak. They were firmly arguing that Pharo is NOT Smalltalk. They contend that making changes that make it different than Smalltalk-80 make it not Smalltalk. http://www.tudorgirba.com/blog/pharo-is-pharo Their contentions were not refuted. I wanted to put forth my understanding and opinion that Pharo is a Smalltalk. And then you reply stating of course everybody here knows Pharo is Smalltalk. But that is exactly what Doru is arguing against. If Pharo is going to distance itself from Smalltalk and be consistent about it, then every Pharo reference to Smalltalk in the image or website or wikipedia unless historical should be changed. This inconsistency makes Pharo look bad. Jimmie On 04/30/2014 01:58 PM, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:

Some days a I really would love not to love smalltalk...

On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:52, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com <mailto:jlhouchin@gmail.com>> wrote:

...

But that is the point. This kind of marketing is false. It denies who we are.

As soon as they look at Pharo. Learn to use and then learn that Pharo is a Smalltalk and that we are liars.

Did keeping silent about Pharo help in the Reddit thread. No. Did the current marketing explain well what Pharo is. No. Read the thread. People were confused. And regardless of the marketing attempt, the fact of Pharo being a Smalltalk did not remain suppressed. So therefore, those who were closed minded against Smalltalk have then been alerted, and they can close their minds. Attempting to not make it plain was an abject failure.

People who understand the value of Smalltalk and of a modern open source implementation will come.

I guess none of the commercial Smalltalks are alive? Nobody knows of them. They are going broke?

Gemstone, VisualWorks, ...

What is this new thing that people are using?

Clojure based on Lisp. Not new. Python 23 years old. Lua 21 Ruby 19

Clojure based on Lisp but adding modern functional features disproves any thought that an old language with lots of baggage can't attract new users. From the Clojure home page. """Clojure is a dialect of Lisp""" They embrace their heritage and are better for it. They also detail their value proposition and being a Lisp is part of it.

I am all agreeable to attracting people to our community. But falseness isn't the way.

Not everybody is closed minded and ignorant. Those that are we can wait until they are not.

But Pharo has to offer people the proper value proposition. When it does, I believe it will attract sincere people. When the value of Pharo meets the needs of the people, it will attact the appropriate people. But until then, we can market it however we want and they will not care. Right now Pharo is working hard to reach that point that it can offer them something they will value. For some it already does. For others not yet. That not yet, it a bigger obstacle than Pharo being marketed as a Smalltalk and telling the truth.

We need to embrace being a Smalltalk and sell our value proposition in terms that mean something to somebody who doesn't already get Smalltalk. We failed at that. Too vague, too ambiguous. It confused some of the Reddit people. People to whom we are supposedly intending to attract and market to.

Jimmie

On 04/30/2014 01:22 PM, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:

...

Again… you are missing the point. nobody here doubts Pharo is a Smalltalk. nobody outside our small world believes Smalltalk is alive.

And yes… you can argue all what you want. But you are scratching where it does not itch.

We choose not to *market* Pharo as a Smalltalk, because each time someone outside our small world hear about Smalltalk believes that is a long time dead language. No matter how much effort you put into explain that is not true, people will not believe it. And people is always more willing to try something new than something old (except in the case of wines and fine alcohols, of course). So… we prefer to track people to our community and let them notice wat WE ALL KNOW: Smalltalk is not dead, and Pharo is a proof of that.

Esteban

On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:07, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com <mailto:jlhouchin@gmail.com>> wrote:

...

In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80.

But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014. Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 1976. ...

And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is not K&R, or C89, C90 or C99? Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with Python 2.x which is dominant?

Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this era to do things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity in the image. We need the image to be clean. We need to learn the lessons we as Smalltalker's have learned in the last 24 years and apply them to Pharo Smalltalk. And I believe that is much of what Pharo is attempting to do.

Noel in his talk said that Smalltalk doesn't play well with others. And with Pharo it still isn't as easy as in other languages like Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. But with NativeBoost we have a tool which enables us to do much. And NativeBoost isn't finished. I believe when NativeBoost is fully mature and the vm/image has sufficiently changed to enable us. We will have one of the best plays with others well stories.

I know in the app I am writing, NativeBoost's current condition struggled with my library. It often crashed. This library has to deal with a C Thread. Which is why I am spending my current time studying C.

Whether or not the Smalltalk Inspired crowd likes it, the moment some else declares that Pharo is a Smalltalk the Smalltalk Inspired marketing is tanked. The cat is out of the bag.

The Reddit thread demonstrates this. People went to the new website. They read the current marketing and were confused. What is this Pharo thing. And in the thread it comes out that Pharo is a Smalltalk. Lets make that clear up front. Then lets define what it means to be Pharo Smalltalk.

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. 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. 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.

Smalltalk has a wonderful heritage. It is not without its issues. However the good of Smalltalk is enormous. Take a look at this chart http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/ Smalltalk is a big influence in the history of programming. This is something worth being a part of. Be proud of it.

Pharo needs to define what one vision of a modern Smalltalk is. Let us educate people of what our vision for Pharo Smalltalk is. And guess what folks its 2014. Before long it wont be. And before long the vision of Pharo 2014 will no longer be any more modern than Smalltalk 80. But neither Smalltalk 80 nor Pharo 3.0 constrain what it means to be Smalltalk. Smalltalk inspires vision and inspires people to do things which change the present and the future. Lets build on that heritage and take it forward. What does a modern Smalltalk snapshot 2014 mean. Lets educate and communicate. Others (non-Smalltalkers) don't get to define what Smalltalk is. We do.

Let us learn from them what they think Smalltalk is. Where they are wrong, educate them. Where they are right and we have an issue. Let's learn a lesson and improve our Smalltalk.

Computer science/art is young. This is a journey. Lets make it a good one.

Jimmie

On 04/30/2014 11:12 AM, phil@highoctane.be wrote:

...

Pharo := Smalltalk ++

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com <mailto:jlhouchin@gmail.com>> wrote:

On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

In this thread and many others there is this debate as to whether Pharo is a Smalltalk or is Smalltalk Inspired.

I find the Smalltalk Inspired arguments to be unpersuasive. To be Smalltalk Inspired is to say that you are not a Smalltalk. It is to say that Pharo is not Smalltalk but inspired by it.

I find that reasoning patently false.

First of all everything in Pharo begins from a Smalltalk image. It comes from Squeak Smalltalk which comes from Apple Smalltalk. etc.

Pharo has an isA relationship with Smalltalk, not an isInspiredBy relationship. It may change and add features, but as has been stated before, Smalltalk isn't a static idea or artifact. It has always been a dynamic live environment in which to change itself into something it believed to be better. By removing features and by growing them.

Smalltalk (an instance of SmalltalkImage), SmalltalkImage, SmalltalkImageTest, SmalltalkEditingState are all part of the Pharo Smalltalk image.

The Pharo image is a Smalltalk image. It says so inside the image itself.

Where are we hosting are source code? Would that be SmalltalkHub? Lets see something. http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo <http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#%21/%7EPharo>

Okay, Pharo might be doing things that would break compatibility with other Smalltalks. And that causes some people pain and grief. However that does not make Pharo not a Smalltalk. Was Smalltalk 76 constrained by backward compatibility with Smalltalk 72? Or Smalltalk 80 with either Smalltalk 76 or 72? No!

Is it a requirement of Pharo to be constrained by other Smalltalk implementations in order to still be a Smalltalk. No!

And then there is the argument of the outside worlds perception of Smalltalk. Since when does the perception of the outside world change whether or not Pharo is a Smalltalk? If the outside world changed their mind and decided Smalltalk is wonderful, does Pharo then all of the sudden become a Smalltalk? Ugh!

We are who we are. Our roots are our roots. Pharo should be happy and proud to be a Smalltalk. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of innovation. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of inventing the future.

We have decided to be marketing driven. Marketing is important. But marketing should determine who we are. And we should engage in disingenuous marketing practice trying to hide our roots or who we are.

Why do we things distancing ourselves from Smalltalk advantages us? Just because there are lots of uneducated people who have the wrong idea about Smalltalk. Clojure embraced its Lisp heritage and is thriving. Lisp has every bit as much baggage.

This talk which inspired this thread called Pharo as Smalltalk. He said, Pharo Smalltalk throughout the presentation. So in the mind of the presenter and now in the mind of the audience at the conference and of the video, Pharo is a Smalltalk. So now are we to go about re-educating all these people that Pharo is not a Smalltalk but is rather Smalltalk Inspired?

We don't require the outside world's permission. We don't need their approval. We would like to have a reasonable and sufficient number of them to catch the Pharo Smalltalk vision and become a part of the family. Do we really desire everybody. No. Do we desire those people who are so closed minded that the mention of Smalltalk closes their mind because of their ignorance. I don't think so.

Smalltalk is different. Pharo is Smalltalk and is different. There will be those who don't like it because of the baggage they bring, not the baggage we bring. And that is okay. All of us think different. People need to embrace what empowers them and quit complaining about what empowers somebody else. We need to embrace empowering people who understand Smalltalk not the people who don't get it for whatever reason. Let those people go and be empowered somewhere else. We and they will both be better off.

Feel free to shred and destroy my arguments. I am proud to use Smalltalk. And currently Pharo is the Smalltalk I am choosing to use. Currently I am studying C. A C library is required for my project and in order to use Pharo and use this library, I need sufficient C skills.

My opinion unapologetically.

And if the powers that be who are in charge of Pharo decide that Smalltalk (in name) is baggage and Pharo is not Smalltalk. And that marketing Pharo as Smalltalk is bad. Then please be honest and change all references in the image of Smalltalk to Pharo. Also change SmalltalkHub to PharoHub or SmalltalkInspiredHub.

If if not, be sincere and embrace Pharo Smalltalk.

Long live Smalltalk.

Jimmie

Let me reply to this as it is my quote you are quoting. On 04/30/2014 03:34 PM, Sean P. DeNigris wrote:

I was reading this thread and watching... Sean arguing... that Pharo is NOT Smalltalk

No!!!!!!!! As I and Esteban (at least, maybe others) have repeated, *we are NOT saying that Pharo is not Smalltalk*.

I said that because you joined in with Doru who was stating firmly that Pharo is not Smalltalk and gave a link to his post. http://www.tudorgirba.com/blog/pharo-is-pharo Where he explicitly states, """ Pharo is not Smalltalk. Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired. """ Which makes Pharo is Smalltalk and Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired as opposing each other. Doru is explicit and insistent on this point. So by association, you engaged after his message in the Pharo is Smalltalk Inspired argument. That is how I arrived at associating you with the claim that Pharo is not Smalltalk. Right or wrong that is how I included you in that aspect of the discussion.

Either we're not explaining ourselves well or (more likely IMHO) everyone is so emotional over this (and it's a good thing that we care that much) that they're not actually reading what we're saying.

How can you read either http://forum.world.st/Pharo-is-Smalltalk-and-Not-td4757342.html or my two main points at http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756995.... and say that I'm saying that?!

I think there is a middle ground where everyone gets what they want. I've tried to express it in the first link above. Please - I love differences and discussion, but if you're going to react, react /specifically/ to what I said (e.g. the two points I made in the second link), because right now, you are only arguing with yourself ;)

Now in your above discussion. You state that Smalltalk = Smalltalk-80 to 99.9% of the developers out there. I don't agree. I would be brazen enough to state that a very high percent of developers out there know almost nothing about Smalltalk. I would wager a high percent weren't even born when Smalltalk-80 came out. You might be one for all I know. I would also wager that most developers don't know there is a Smalltalk-80. I imagine that there is more ignorance than knowledge about Smalltalk. Those who have heard of Smalltalk have probably heard of Smalltalk from someone who doesn't use Smalltalk for whatever reason. And there are many reasons, and many are valid. So what they hear is reasons not to use Smalltalk or why people in their community who have a cursory Smalltalk experience state as their reasons for not using Smalltalk. I just don't happen to believe that we should allow people who don't use Smalltalk to define it. They can express their opinion, and we should listen. That which is valid learn, that which is not nicely engage in education and communication. They may still choose not to use Pharo or Smalltalk, but hopefully they won't engage in disinformation. In Pharo's four years since 1.0 Pharo has changed much. So Pharo has to deal with its own baggage. There are many who used Pharo 1 or 2. They encountered whatever challenges inherent in those versions and left disappointed. We will have to rebuild Pharo's image to those people. We will have to answer for Pharo's history. Unless we are to say, we are targeting our marketing to only those people who have never used any dialect of Smalltalk. But this Smalltalk-Inspired vs. Smalltalk is a very leaky marketing plan. As soon as anybody not in on the game declares, Pharo is a Smalltalk, the game is over. We then have to have an answer for why we are a modern Smalltalk and how we answer our past failures. However, there are many who have a modest understanding of Smalltalk. For example, why does Noel Rappin teach that You Should Learn Smalltalk, but does not teach that You Should Use Smalltalk? What are his reasons for not using Pharo? For the people who get Smalltalk, Pharo, why do they not use it? Those are answers we need so that we can make valuable decisions on providing a story that is attractive to both those who have used Pharo/Smalltalk and those who have not. We need to increase the value proposition so that we can increase people who say, "In order to provide bread, I program in X, but in my spare time projects I use Pharo". As that group increases I believe we will see an increase in business use of Pharo. And people will then be able to make a living programming in Pharo. Plays well with others is still a big issue. It is the one I struggle with. Interfacing a C library and its issues. I love Pharo/Smalltalk and I struggle sometimes with whether or not I will get to use it. Because my C is lacking. I wrote the NativeBoost wrapper around the library. But it crashes. But the intersection of those who have knowledge in this area is small. And those who have time to deal with other peoples issues is even fewer. So I am spending my time studying C hoping that at some point the intersection of my knowledge of C is sufficient to solve my problem with C and Pharo. Most people would have simply just used Python or Lua and be done with it. I just don't prefer to live in Python or Lua. If I can provide at all a way to get to where I can use Pharo. My apologies for ranting in this thread. As you stated it is a passionate thing. Jimmie

sebastian@flowingconcept.com wrote

Then it’s a failed decision as Reddit reactions proves.

I think that's a bit premature. The reaction on Reddit was because there was no mention on the Pharo site/release-notice of Smalltalk *anywhere*. There was no path to take people from the sound bite to the full picture (I'm writing some thoughts on that right now and will start a separate thread). You don't wave the white flag after losing one battle! And certainly not when the evidence of losing even that battle is a few commenters on Reddit! We learned an important lesson - if we're not going to provide people with a neat little pink plane Smalltalk box to put Pharo in, then we better have some good answers as to what it /really/ is when they start investigating. Each one of those criticisms is an opportunity. The useful question is - what supporting explanation on the website would have taken their initial curiosity, possibly enabled by not being turned off by a misunderstanding of the word "Smalltalk", and guided them down the path of understanding the fuller picture that - it is an environment, and a library, and a dialect of the Smalltalk language. ----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4757341.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

On 30 April 2014 19:33, Esteban A. Maringolo <emaringolo@gmail.com> wrote:

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

The problem here is that if you downplay the Smalltalk foundations of Pharo then you only reinforce the impression that Smalltalk is outdated when it is revealed that Pharo is a Smalltalk. What matters more is whether Pharo is a "Smalltalk done right", or Smalltalk for the New web 3.0 era, where none of the popular languages offer a live coding environment. An open source Smalltalk should really target Python in the areas where Python is used as a scripting front end to systems written in higher performance languages, ie stuff like Blender, Unity, Gephi etc. Power users who need live interactive environments should be the main target of a tool like Pharo. That also fits with early Smalltalk designers principles which were focused on helping end users model their stuff, children to a large extent. For software developers something like Smalltalk/X would probably be a better bet if the licensing could draw more developers to it, or one of the other Java based Smalltalk if they were finished. They need better interoperability and the ability to drop down to C or some other low level language when they need it. Software developers are not thinking about what they can do with it now, they are thinking of what they will not be able to do with it 18 months down the line. -- Frank Church ======================= http://devblog.brahmancreations.com

kilon alios wrote

"Smalltalk inspired" is reinforcing "Sorry for dead Smalltalk

The more I think about it, the more I dislike Smalltalk-inspired. I think the best plan would be to: 1. Hold off for a brief moment mentioning Smalltalk at all - e.g. give a sound bite, introduce the environment and libraries, and then when we're ready to mention the language and legacy 2. Something like "Smalltalk Unleashed" or "Smalltalk Reborn" ----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4757488.... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Hi! On 04/30/2014 10:02 PM, kilon alios wrote:

Another mistake is that people tend to over idealising Smalltalk and it appears as if Smalltalk used to be popular, but I have found no evidence that Smalltalk was ever popular. Again I may be wrong but this is also maybe a motivation to regard Smalltalk dead.

It was quite popular in... 1985-ish to 1995-ish. I would guess that during those years VisualWorks and VisualAge (primarily) covered 33% of the OOP market and C++ about 60% - and the rest by other even smaller things like Eiffel. Those numbers I recall from some magazine, so I am not making them up. If you were into OO at the time it was quite a lot of buzz around both Smalltalk and C++ IMHO. But OOP was almost exclusively used in large corporations or institutions that could muster the licenses. But Smalltalk *was* fairly big and some truly huge systems were built. But it was not in any serious awareness outside the corporate world - since there was hardly any cheap or free Smalltalk available. C++ was though and ate up that space, and of course... ...you know what came in 1995. :) If say... Dolphin had been born as an open source (or at least gratis download) project - so that people could easily build Win32 apps for consumer use, like VB or Deplhi... then perhaps the world had been different. regards, Göran

I worked at a company writing commercial (i.e. shrink wrapped boxes on store shelves) application using Smalltalk V. On May 12, 2014, at 3:54 PM, Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice@gmail.com> wrote:

2014-05-12 22:33 GMT+02:00 Göran Krampe <goran@krampe.se>: Hi!

On 04/30/2014 10:02 PM, kilon alios wrote: Another mistake is that people tend to over idealising Smalltalk and it appears as if Smalltalk used to be popular, but I have found no evidence that Smalltalk was ever popular. Again I may be wrong but this is also maybe a motivation to regard Smalltalk dead.

It was quite popular in... 1985-ish to 1995-ish. I would guess that during those years VisualWorks and VisualAge (primarily) covered 33% of the OOP market and C++ about 60% - and the rest by other even smaller things like Eiffel. Those numbers I recall from some magazine, so I am not making them up. If you were into OO at the time it was quite a lot of buzz around both Smalltalk and C++ IMHO.

But OOP was almost exclusively used in large corporations or institutions that could muster the licenses. But Smalltalk *was* fairly big and some truly huge systems were built.

But it was not in any serious awareness outside the corporate world - since there was hardly any cheap or free Smalltalk available. C++ was though and ate up that space, and of course...

...you know what came in 1995. :)

If say... Dolphin had been born as an open source (or at least gratis download) project - so that people could easily build Win32 apps for consumer use, like VB or Deplhi... then perhaps the world had been different.

regards, Göran

But Smalltalk V was cheap, small, fairly well documented and worked on windows (DOS even).

Jimmie Houchin wrote:

On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

...

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: "But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smallt...

In this thread and many others there is this debate as to whether Pharo is a Smalltalk or is Smalltalk Inspired.

I find the Smalltalk Inspired arguments to be unpersuasive. To be Smalltalk Inspired is to say that you are not a Smalltalk. It is to say that Pharo is not Smalltalk but inspired by it.

I find that reasoning patently false.

First of all everything in Pharo begins from a Smalltalk image. It comes from Squeak Smalltalk which comes from Apple Smalltalk. etc.

Pharo has an isA relationship with Smalltalk, not an isInspiredBy relationship. It may change and add features, but as has been stated before, Smalltalk isn't a static idea or artifact. It has always been a dynamic live environment in which to change itself into something it believed to be better. By removing features and by growing them.

Smalltalk (an instance of SmalltalkImage), SmalltalkImage, SmalltalkImageTest, SmalltalkEditingState are all part of the Pharo Smalltalk image.

The Pharo image is a Smalltalk image. It says so inside the image itself.

Where are we hosting are source code? Would that be SmalltalkHub? Lets see something. http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo

Okay, Pharo might be doing things that would break compatibility with other Smalltalks. And that causes some people pain and grief. However that does not make Pharo not a Smalltalk. Was Smalltalk 76 constrained by backward compatibility with Smalltalk 72? Or Smalltalk 80 with either Smalltalk 76 or 72? No!

Is it a requirement of Pharo to be constrained by other Smalltalk implementations in order to still be a Smalltalk. No!

And then there is the argument of the outside worlds perception of Smalltalk. Since when does the perception of the outside world change whether or not Pharo is a Smalltalk? If the outside world changed their mind and decided Smalltalk is wonderful, does Pharo then all of the sudden become a Smalltalk? Ugh!

We are who we are. Our roots are our roots. Pharo should be happy and proud to be a Smalltalk. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of innovation. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of inventing the future.

We have decided to be marketing driven. Marketing is important. But marketing should determine who we are. And we should engage in disingenuous marketing practice trying to hide our roots or who we are.

Why do we things distancing ourselves from Smalltalk advantages us? Just because there are lots of uneducated people who have the wrong idea about Smalltalk. Clojure embraced its Lisp heritage and is thriving. Lisp has every bit as much baggage.

This talk which inspired this thread called Pharo as Smalltalk. He said, Pharo Smalltalk throughout the presentation. So in the mind of the presenter and now in the mind of the audience at the conference and of the video, Pharo is a Smalltalk. So now are we to go about re-educating all these people that Pharo is not a Smalltalk but is rather Smalltalk Inspired?

We don't require the outside world's permission. We don't need their approval. We would like to have a reasonable and sufficient number of them to catch the Pharo Smalltalk vision and become a part of the family. Do we really desire everybody. No. Do we desire those people who are so closed minded that the mention of Smalltalk closes their mind because of their ignorance. I don't think so.

Smalltalk is different. Pharo is Smalltalk and is different. There will be those who don't like it because of the baggage they bring, not the baggage we bring. And that is okay. All of us think different. People need to embrace what empowers them and quit complaining about what empowers somebody else. We need to embrace empowering people who understand Smalltalk not the people who don't get it for whatever reason. Let those people go and be empowered somewhere else. We and they will both be better off.

Feel free to shred and destroy my arguments. I am proud to use Smalltalk. And currently Pharo is the Smalltalk I am choosing to use. Currently I am studying C. A C library is required for my project and in order to use Pharo and use this library, I need sufficient C skills.

My opinion unapologetically.

And if the powers that be who are in charge of Pharo decide that Smalltalk (in name) is baggage and Pharo is not Smalltalk. And that marketing Pharo as Smalltalk is bad. Then please be honest and change all references in the image of Smalltalk to Pharo. Also change SmalltalkHub to PharoHub or SmalltalkInspiredHub.

If if not, be sincere and embrace Pharo Smalltalk.

Long live Smalltalk.

Jimmie

Thanks for taking the time to write. You have some good points. Looking in from outside it seems that "Smalltalk inspired" is used as means to break the shackles of backward compatibility. At the time of the fork from Squeak backward compatibility was probably a big issue that felt important to plant that stake in the ground to define the new fork. We all see the world based on our experiences, and our frustrations mold our thinking. I think Pharo has successfully cultivated this aspect and maybe the "inspired" has served its purpose and is not needed so much. Personally I don't mind "Smalltalk inspired", but actually I whenever I talk of it I find I often naturally say "Pharo Smalltalk". Now if the crux of it is being unconstrained by Smalltalk-80, then perhaps a sufficient alternative could be: "More than Smalltalk-80" or maybe being an "Innovative Smalltalk" implies that well enough. cheers -ben