Hi Sebastian, this is the way I use to present Smalltalk: - open Xerox Smalltalk-80 image (using Hobes) - show this UI, how scrollbars work, how you have to specify window regions, basics of window management etc. Tell them few words about visit of Steve Jobs in Xerox and how it influenced the next development of personal computers. Almost nobody had an opportunity to see it in action so you will gain their attention. - then mention the date in Transcript (31 May 1983). Tell them about an image, VM, snapshoting, that you resume the program after almost 30 years on different computer architecture in the different millenium :-) - tell that Smalltalk-80 is a combination of OS, IDE and programming language and that you will show some examples - show 3+4 - print it - Pen example - do it, open Browser and show them this method - use explain command on "Pen" - open a class browser on it - then show: MessageTally spyOn: [Pen example], profiling is quite interesting property in such old environment - evaluate 1/0, open debugger, change value of dividend to 2 and continue with the evaluation - evaluate 1/0 again, open debugger and then change the method to return 0 instead of rising the error, continue. Then do several next divisions by zero to show that you changed behavior of the whole system. - evaluate Display inspect and show inspector, inspecting of instance variables and their modification. - evaluate String allInstances size - evaluate (String allInstances asSortedCollection: [:a :b | a size <= b size]) last inspect (it doesn't have detect: message) - show an example of become: message, that you changed all references to the object. - show the browser capabilities - senders, implementors, implementations of used messages. - tell them that all you did you did on system without attached source codes, that the code you have seen and changed were all decompiled - finally ask yourself: when Smalltalk-80 was able to do all this things in the year 1983, what it can do now? ;-) Cheers, -- Pavel On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 4:58 PM, <sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote:

hahaha XD

great stuff

dynamic vs. static isn't an issue anymore

dynamic won hands down already and years ago

the thing now is to expand people's vision of what can be done with it

and these are good points (to talk to engineers)

the audience has other people too so I need more stories from the trenches :)

sebastian

o/

----- Original Message ----- From: "Torsten Bergmann" <astares@gmx.de> To: pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 11:19:26 AM Subject: [Pharo-project] what is your pharo story?

Pick one ...

STORY 1: ========

What I like most is that I do not rely on IDE vendors or tools to do measure things like:

TestCase allSubclasses size

inspect things like:

Account allInstances collect: [:each | each value > 10 ]

or script my environment:

TestCase allSubclasses do: [:each | each removeFromSystem ]

Try all this in any of the other "static" environments. And yes - one can shoot itself in the foot:

true become: false

but I like the freedom.

STORY 2: ======= In any program environment you have to use a debugger. In Smalltalk you can just save the image and continue the next work day on exactly the same point you left.

In other environments you usually close the IDE in the evening and start to debug the program the next day again until you are at this point, have the stack and variables in the same state. Lots of wasted time and developer resources in static world...

STORY 3: ======== "Rethinking the typing" as you can see http://astares.blogspot.de/2006/08/rethinking-typing.html

STORY 4: ======== When I tell people that Smalltalk is not a language - just a dynamic object system with a language built on top of it. A method, a class ... anything is an object.

So if you need additions you just implement them without waiting for the next language spec or vendors.

Need traits, interfaces, namespaces, ... just add them.

Embed other languages: just add them (see Helvetica) http://astares.blogspot.de/2009/11/helvetia-embedding-languages.html)

New control structures? Just implement them. An example: Pascal hat a REPEAT UNTIL. C/C++/Java language family and Smalltalk does not have such a construct.

The difference: in Smalltalk I can just add a new method #repeatUntil: to BlockClosure if I really need it.

STORY X: ======== ...

I think that the examples related with stuff invented 30 years ago will depend on the audience. Most programmers, young ones in particular, have a deep lack of knowledge about the history of technology , they barely know about the tools they use everyday, and they don't have interest in learning about them either. So saying to them that Smalltalk invented BitBlt, is like talking them about punched cards. At least that is my experience. About the points, one thing that I found really useful is doing actual TDD or programming in the debugger, sometimes I get impressed myself when while having an open debugger I add an instance variable in another Browser (or even in the debugger), and have such modification already available to all the instances I have in the context of debugging (and the image, of course). Showing how productive you can be is something that also gets the interest of newcomers, unfortunately being productive is not building greater things with the same or less effort, but building the same with less efforts, hence the proliferation of one-liners and viral code snippets to attract naive programmers or people looking for something different, and are lazy to embrace something with a steep learning curve. Another good point is that when you develop using Smalltalk you (or at least I do) feel like you're inside your system, you program "from the inside", it is an immersive experience. With other tools, even with really advanced IDE's you never get that immersion, you feel like moving levers, and manipulating a machine, and advanced and most of the times decent machine, but the experience is less "humane" (using Tudor's use of the word) and not immersive. My points are not based Pharo stories, but are backed by 10 years of Smalltalk use, starting with Squeak, and passing through VW, VisualSmalltalk, VAST and Dolphin. I use Pharo, and enjoy it, though I'm not Kent Beck. Best regards, -- Esteban M. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/what-is-your-pharo-story-tp4651692p4651732.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

I agree, but OTH my experience is somewhat different. When you teach thisContext and some well chosen examples of what you can do with it, students usually are amazed. Then you challenge them to do the same in other languages, and they have no clue of where to start (you know, Java and C++, maybe some Python). The really great coup de grace is when you tell them that that was invented 40 years ago. And that the Binding example they thought was so cool is from a 1981 magazine article (Peter Deutsch's "Building Control Structures..." from Byte aug.'81). Smalltalk has its merits, and it deserves a place among XXIst century advanced languages. But it also has a history. And a beautiful one, if you ask... Bests, Jordi

+ 1

...

I think that the examples related with stuff invented 30 years ago will depend on the audience. Most programmers, young ones in particular, have a deep lack of knowledge about the history of technology , they barely know about the tools they use everyday, and they don't have interest in learning about them either. So saying to them that Smalltalk invented BitBlt, is like talking them about punched cards. At least that is my experience.