I don't speak for the pharo community but even when I was new to smalltalk back 4 years ago if I have read a comment like "Smalltalk is dead, why are we studying this useless language" I would keep my distance from that person. Because a) calling something "dead" in software is stupid b) calling something "useless" in software is even more stupid. I would prefer it if I was not so rude but in situations like these its kinda pointless hiding the obvious truth.�� There are people who still code entire OSs for my first computer Amstrad CPC 6128 a computer back from 1988 with 128 kb of Ram and 4 hz of cpu.�� One such OS has multitasking , GUIs, video player, web browser and all that built on technology that is 30 years old and thousands times slower, thats how useful "dead" software is.
Ask the same people for how long Java has been dead , because people have been declaring the death of Java for decades now. Java is beyond dead , its actually the queen of undead.
I am not promoting either Smalltalk or Pharo because frankly there are better alternatives out there. But I am using Pharo because I find the whole environment very enjoyable for my taste. I also admire people of this community because they are not afraid to break away from popularity and innovate, I find this very refreshing. Software development is littered with unimaginative clones, Pharo is a breath of fresh air.��
There are many flaws in Pharo and I think as a community we are well aware of them , for us it was never an issue what we should do to bring new users , but rather how to convince more people to contribute because in the end problems dont fix themselves. This a known problem for vast majority of open source software and if we use your class criteria most software is "dead" by these standards.
-Morphic designer has been tried in the past, its a huge project and quite complex to pull through. I would not hold my breath.
-Pharo is not 64 bit, yet, but soon
-The perks of allowing the system to be hacked easily are that you going to have some severe side effects in some cases, especially if you dont know what you are doing.
-Popups , no idea what you mean , I dont have such problem
- sources is exactly what the name says, source code, the image contains only bytecode, so without sources you cannot view the source code of the system
- Easier morph removal exists, just inspect the parent morph the inspector will show you the children then go to the child you want to delete and issue a self delete command. But yeah halos could be improved in this case.
-As phil said, use fork for delay and your image will never freeze again because of the code you executed.
I understand someone not wanting to learn Pharo or Smalltalk on the basis he wont use it as a professional, I sympathize.�� Then again, I have not used 99% of the languages I have learned.Do I regret learning them ? Nope, they made me a better programmer and that is what Pharo is doing too.
Lets be sincere here , people who love to be spoon fed wont be contributing to open source project any time soon. Contributing to an open source project is difficult, require patience and determination.
No GC language forces you to use garbage collection you can circumvent it easily using an FFI. But then if you have no intention of taking advantage of GC then there is no point on using a GC language and I can understand why you prefer C++ CLI. On other hand Pharo does enforce dynamic types but then OOP by nature is dynamic anyway.