New Proposal for new Pharo website - About page (with example website)
I don't like the about page. Its still unclear what Pharo is and I have to agree with the complains we are getting at reddit. So instead of starting a long conversation about how I would want it done , I sat my ass down and made a draft of it so you can see it directly. Please bare in mind this is draft , I just wanted to show you my idea for an About page. You can find the draft here http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about I think contributors should go to a seperate page called "Credit" I am open to comments and suggestions.
I have further refined the About page but not I have also created additional pages for "language" and "ide" you can click on the main page on those words because they are links to send to you to the corresponding page or you can access these pages from here "The Language" http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about#!language/cee5 "The IDE" http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about#!ide/cfvg Again these are drafts WIP , with many mistake and still with room for a lot of improvement. The good news is that I tried the website on my mobile phone and it seems it works well for mobile devices too On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 12:36 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't like the about page. Its still unclear what Pharo is and I have to agree with the complains we are getting at reddit.
So instead of starting a long conversation about how I would want it done , I sat my ass down and made a draft of it so you can see it directly.
Please bare in mind this is draft , I just wanted to show you my idea for an About page. You can find the draft here
http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about
I think contributors should go to a seperate page called "Credit"
I am open to comments and suggestions.
Hi Kilon, On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 8:01 AM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
I have further refined the About page but not I have also created additional pages for "language" and "ide" you can click on the main page on those words because they are links to send to you to the corresponding page or you can access these pages from here
"The Language"
This is really good. My criticism is that "invented in 1969" implies it hasn't changed that much since then. It has, and one of the biggest changes was from Smalltalk-72 to Smalltalk-76. You might instead say something like "conceived in 1969, and stabilizing as Smalltalk-80 in the 1980's". One of the things I missed on first visit was the "fast moving forward" section. I suggest you eliminate it and put the information in the first section. But there are significant language developments since then: - traits - namespaces - closures - ByteArray literals - method pragmas/method tags and more to come: - slots I would replace the third section with something on the class library, that it is large (numbers, collections, graphics, multi-media, etc, the more the better) and mature.
"The IDE"
You don't say anything about the debugger. The debugger is of course excellent and one of the few that allows programming in the debugger. That deserves a sentence or two surely.
Again these are drafts WIP , with many mistake and still with room for a lot of improvement.
The good news is that I tried the website on my mobile phone and it seems it works well for mobile devices too
On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 12:36 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>wrote:
I don't like the about page. Its still unclear what Pharo is and I have to agree with the complains we are getting at reddit.
So instead of starting a long conversation about how I would want it done , I sat my ass down and made a draft of it so you can see it directly.
Please bare in mind this is draft , I just wanted to show you my idea for an About page. You can find the draft here
http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about
I think contributors should go to a seperate page called "Credit"
I am open to comments and suggestions.
-- best, Eliot
Yes Eliot very good suggestions, I am not very familiar with the history or what Pharo adds to the Smalltalk syntax. I welcome any addition to my text , correction, modification. I am open to everything. Just post your text here and I will add it to the website. I am already in contact with esteban he likes my idea too and he said he can take the draft and integrate it inside the current new website for Pharo. Of course I would love it first if you the experienced Pharo developers improve my text so we have a very good quality website not only for begineers but also experienced coders. Class library section as third section sounds excellent idea, please if you can give me a paragraph or anyone with experience on this. I try to add anything I know about Pharo but unfortunately there is still much I don't know. Regarding other Pharo libraries they will go to the third page "The Enviroment" together with Live coding , the power of debugger and of course a basic description for the image format. Dont worry about the debugger, I decided to have a big section about it in "The Enviroment" page. Of course I can still mention it in the IDE page. On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 7:33 PM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>wrote:
Hi Kilon,
On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 8:01 AM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
I have further refined the About page but not I have also created additional pages for "language" and "ide" you can click on the main page on those words because they are links to send to you to the corresponding page or you can access these pages from here
"The Language"
This is really good. My criticism is that "invented in 1969" implies it hasn't changed that much since then. It has, and one of the biggest changes was from Smalltalk-72 to Smalltalk-76. You might instead say something like "conceived in 1969, and stabilizing as Smalltalk-80 in the 1980's".
One of the things I missed on first visit was the "fast moving forward" section. I suggest you eliminate it and put the information in the first section.
But there are significant language developments since then:
- traits - namespaces - closures - ByteArray literals - method pragmas/method tags
and more to come: - slots
I would replace the third section with something on the class library, that it is large (numbers, collections, graphics, multi-media, etc, the more the better) and mature.
"The IDE"
You don't say anything about the debugger. The debugger is of course excellent and one of the few that allows programming in the debugger. That deserves a sentence or two surely.
Again these are drafts WIP , with many mistake and still with room for a lot of improvement.
The good news is that I tried the website on my mobile phone and it seems it works well for mobile devices too
On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 12:36 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com>wrote:
I don't like the about page. Its still unclear what Pharo is and I have to agree with the complains we are getting at reddit.
So instead of starting a long conversation about how I would want it done , I sat my ass down and made a draft of it so you can see it directly.
Please bare in mind this is draft , I just wanted to show you my idea for an About page. You can find the draft here
http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about
I think contributors should go to a seperate page called "Credit"
I am open to comments and suggestions.
-- best, Eliot
kilon alios wrote
Class library section as third section sounds excellent idea, please if you can give me a paragraph or anyone with experience on this. I try to add anything I know about Pharo but unfortunately there is still much I don't know.
I think it's important to introduce the concepts in a very specific order, most importantly with the language last (the syntax was always the least interesting thing about Smalltalk, and it addresses concerns about turning people off right off the bat, without hiding anything) (see http://forum.world.st/Pharo-is-Smalltalk-and-Not-tp4757342p4757348.html): 1. a [pick 2 or 3 of: dynamic, open, immersive, live] computing environment (like an IDE and OS rolled into one) 2. [appropriate adjectives] core libraries 3. a dialect of the Smalltalk programming language The immersive environment of live objects is the most compelling - from a programming standpoint, sending someone a serialized debug session, customizing the world menu, the simplicity of adding settings, all in a live, dynamic way; that you have a whole computer (OS + IDE + libraries) done with ~20% of the LOC of Ruby 1.9 (without *any* tools!) and ~0.5% of the LOC of Windows Vista; this is the blue plane idea that Smalltalk took on ----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/New-Proposal-for-new-Pharo-website-About-page-with-exa... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
If I put the language last then I would mislead people into thinking its something like Emacs. In this case an IDE that also happens to have a programming language. It will only add to the confusion. I have recommended Pharo to several people their complaints were very similar a) the gui looks weird / ugly b) documentation does not look good/dated . As a matter of fact the language is one the things people liked, together with live code of course. I think the language is one of the very strong points of Pharo and it should be promoted. It also makes the goal of Pharo clear, the language comes first. But if others agree to put the language last, I have no issue its our website , the majority should decide. I don't want to go into the whole debate of whether Pharo is this kind of Smalltalk or the other kind of Smalltalk. Again if Pharo developers decide on what kinda of Smalltalk Pharo is I am more than happy to put that into the description. But to be frank with you I find the description of the old site too vague for my taste and very confusing. I want a description that is specific, clear and foremost practical. "Immersive" does not mean anything to me, "open" again not very clear (do you mean open source ?), "live" ? sorry I dont understand what is live ? These are the questions people will ask when they see the description. Please approach this from the side of a very sceptical yet curious coder that does not share the same excitement and love as you and me about Pharo. If he read a bunch of vague words its much more likely to be put off a lot more than seeing the very efficient and practical Smalltalk syntax. I also dont believe the ~20% of Ruby, how much stuff Ruby has that Pharo does not ? I rather not compete with other languages and make people see Pharo as elitist. On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 9:25 PM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com>wrote:
kilon alios wrote
Class library section as third section sounds excellent idea, please if you can give me a paragraph or anyone with experience on this. I try to add anything I know about Pharo but unfortunately there is still much I don't know.
I think it's important to introduce the concepts in a very specific order, most importantly with the language last (the syntax was always the least interesting thing about Smalltalk, and it addresses concerns about turning people off right off the bat, without hiding anything) (see http://forum.world.st/Pharo-is-Smalltalk-and-Not-tp4757342p4757348.html): 1. a [pick 2 or 3 of: dynamic, open, immersive, live] computing environment (like an IDE and OS rolled into one) 2. [appropriate adjectives] core libraries 3. a dialect of the Smalltalk programming language
The immersive environment of live objects is the most compelling - from a programming standpoint, sending someone a serialized debug session, customizing the world menu, the simplicity of adding settings, all in a live, dynamic way; that you have a whole computer (OS + IDE + libraries) done with ~20% of the LOC of Ruby 1.9 (without *any* tools!) and ~0.5% of the LOC of Windows Vista; this is the blue plane idea that Smalltalk took on
----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/New-Proposal-for-new-Pharo-website-About-page-with-exa... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Ok I am finished with the website draft , this is my third and last web page dedicated to the Debugger, Live Coding, Library and the Enviroment . You may use this content as you may see fit . It was Fun :) http://thekilon.wix.com/pharo-about#!enviroment/c1sv8 On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 10:11 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
If I put the language last then I would mislead people into thinking its something like Emacs. In this case an IDE that also happens to have a programming language. It will only add to the confusion.
I have recommended Pharo to several people their complaints were very similar a) the gui looks weird / ugly b) documentation does not look good/dated . As a matter of fact the language is one the things people liked, together with live code of course.
I think the language is one of the very strong points of Pharo and it should be promoted. It also makes the goal of Pharo clear, the language comes first.
But if others agree to put the language last, I have no issue its our website , the majority should decide.
I don't want to go into the whole debate of whether Pharo is this kind of Smalltalk or the other kind of Smalltalk. Again if Pharo developers decide on what kinda of Smalltalk Pharo is I am more than happy to put that into the description. But to be frank with you I find the description of the old site too vague for my taste and very confusing.
I want a description that is specific, clear and foremost practical.
"Immersive" does not mean anything to me, "open" again not very clear (do you mean open source ?), "live" ? sorry I dont understand what is live ? These are the questions people will ask when they see the description.
Please approach this from the side of a very sceptical yet curious coder that does not share the same excitement and love as you and me about Pharo. If he read a bunch of vague words its much more likely to be put off a lot more than seeing the very efficient and practical Smalltalk syntax.
I also dont believe the ~20% of Ruby, how much stuff Ruby has that Pharo does not ? I rather not compete with other languages and make people see Pharo as elitist.
On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 9:25 PM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com>wrote:
kilon alios wrote
Class library section as third section sounds excellent idea, please if you can give me a paragraph or anyone with experience on this. I try to add anything I know about Pharo but unfortunately there is still much I don't know.
I think it's important to introduce the concepts in a very specific order, most importantly with the language last (the syntax was always the least interesting thing about Smalltalk, and it addresses concerns about turning people off right off the bat, without hiding anything) (see http://forum.world.st/Pharo-is-Smalltalk-and-Not-tp4757342p4757348.html): 1. a [pick 2 or 3 of: dynamic, open, immersive, live] computing environment (like an IDE and OS rolled into one) 2. [appropriate adjectives] core libraries 3. a dialect of the Smalltalk programming language
The immersive environment of live objects is the most compelling - from a programming standpoint, sending someone a serialized debug session, customizing the world menu, the simplicity of adding settings, all in a live, dynamic way; that you have a whole computer (OS + IDE + libraries) done with ~20% of the LOC of Ruby 1.9 (without *any* tools!) and ~0.5% of the LOC of Windows Vista; this is the blue plane idea that Smalltalk took on
----- Cheers, Sean -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/New-Proposal-for-new-Pharo-website-About-page-with-exa... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
participants (3)
-
Eliot Miranda -
kilon alios -
Sean P. DeNigris