Along those lines, I would also like to get an explanation from Jupiter Jones' for "how do you do an if/then?" which as he states leads to a "mind-blown" moment.

The ��mind blown�� comes from a first look at methods in the classes True and False to see how boolean logic is implemented.

For many beginners, it seems so foreign that it takes a moment to realise just how simple and clean the implementation is. It opens their mind to new ways of writing code, and gives them a beautiful example of polymorphism. With your prior experience, you may not feel the same awe :)

Though, I am interested in understanding how to use Pharo as the development tool to be able to release code via GemStone Smalltalk.

That whole world is kinda in a state of flux right now. But you can check out https://gemtalksystems.com/small-business/gsdevkit/

Is it so that Seaside runs identically on Pharo as well as GemStone Smalltalk?

For the most part Seaside pretty much runs identically on all its platforms. But it��s because GemStone is a server smalltalk, and as such doesn��t have a native interface beyond a terminal.

So, in a sense, Seaside would to Smalltalk, what "Ruby on Rails" is to Ruby.