Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work. However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo. I know sometimes we get stuck in the minutiae and lose the big picture. I just want to say thanks to all that have contributed to Pharo in big and small way. Thank you. A special thanks to Stef, Marcus and company who have been working hard on this all the way back when it was still Squeak. Who had a vision for a clean, empowering, business ready, vision fulfilling Smalltalk inspired tool we call Pharo. Thanks. And a thanks to Eliot and all who contribute on the VM side of things. Enabling us to have a nicely performing and stable vm to run the Pharo image. My apologies for not naming everyone who deserves thanks. I intend no offense to anyone not named, but also deserving. Your names are included in all the contributor documentation. Thanks. And while I am being thankful, which is a good habit for all of us to be in. Being thankful not only improves the spirits of those being thanked. But those of us who are grateful are the biggest beneficiaries. I want to take time to appreciate some things in Pharo that make us appreciate having a tool like Pharo and which distinguishes itself from other languages and environments. I think these things either distinguish themselves either in the relative uniqueness or in quality of their implementation. They are not necessarily distinguishing from other Smalltalks but from other non-Smalltalk languages. Superior persistent live object environment. This is the game changer and affects and enables all other benefits. """I'm not complaining. I know that there is a good chance that we break the system when improving it. I have no problem with that and I prefer a living system with some bugs for a while than a dead system with no bug""" Stef - Sept. 7, 2015 IDE, debugging and refactoring, all live, all the time. Because of the truly persistent live environment, there is no concept of shutdown, restart. We only know hibernate and resume. This is to use OS terms. For me this is an amazing boost to productivity. I can at any time save my image. Even close my saved image and resume exactly where I stopped. At any time, on any supported OS, on any machine. Powerful. There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs. If I am not in Pharo, even if that language has an amazing notebook or repl available. It is nothing like coding in the live environment. The separation of editor and the compiler and/or application or VM makes development not as smooth and fluid. Even if I can enter and execute code in a notebook or repl to explore and learn in a version of a live environment. I still at some point have to leave my editing environment and write, edit and save my source code. And yes there are languages, editors, IDEs and tools that attempt to close the gap. But no, there still is a significant gap. The edited source code is the only thing that persists. Everything that gets executed in the repl or notebook is transient and will go away. MIT, equivalent or better licensed ecosystem. For me these are game changers. They set a standard by which I view any other programming experience. Thusly all other programming experience falls far short. Whenever I (we) experience a present weakness in Pharo. Remember the above. Not only does Pharo have these distinguishing factors. I do not know of any language or environment which even has a culture or worldview of programming which seeks to bring these features to their favored language or tools. Every time I have to restart my computer I think, Smalltalk solved this decades ago. Ugh!!! Where is my Pharo machine. :) If you have any Pharo distinctives that you appreciate and would like to share. Reply and let us know. What I mean by distinctive is something that Pharo (or Smalltalk) has that is either not in other languages or is in general significantly inferior. Especially those that other languages have no vision to ever have. It just isn't a part of who they are. If we keep these things before us as we work through the tedious work of cleaning the image, repairing fail attempts at various things. Or anything that may be a frustration for the moment, but is temporary. Remember what we gain and are blessed with having, that we would lose any where else. Or at a minimum have a far inferior substitute. And look forward to what we will have as these things become complete. The future is ours. Let's enjoy the journey. Just some thoughts in my head I wanted to let out. This is reminder to me. If any of you are blessed and inspired, that is a plus. Thanks and Shalom. Jimmie
Le 17/10/2015 00:14, Jimmie Houchin a écrit :
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
100% agree. When people report about perceived deficiencies, it means these people do care about Pharo. And yes, it is always rewarding (in both direction as you mention it) to say goodness to the Pharo people. So I join for an applause to Stef, Markus, Esteban, Eliot, Ben, Tudor, Igor, Stephan, Damien, Torsten, Thierry, Alexandre, Sean, Phil, Nicolai, and many more... Regarding Pharo distinctives, its live nature makes it perfect for learners. There is a global interest in educating kids to not only learn ICT but to understand it through programming. Scratch demonstrates it perfectly for primary education. Pharo itself is nice for secondary education, senior hight school I think. I experimented it a bit with the DrGeo environment, it went fine, but I really did not get enough opportunity and my student are two youngs to have interesting mathematics situation modeled with it. I hope to have some more motivation to experiment it more. Hilaire -- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu http://google.com/+DrgeoEu
On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 3:35 PM, Hilaire <hilaire@drgeo.eu> wrote:
Le 17/10/2015 00:14, Jimmie Houchin a écrit :
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
100% agree. When people report about perceived deficiencies, it means these people do care about Pharo. And yes, it is always rewarding (in both direction as you mention it) to say goodness to the Pharo people. So I join for an applause to Stef, Markus, Esteban, Eliot, Ben, Tudor, Igor, Stephan, Damien, Torsten, Thierry, Alexandre, Sean, Phil, Nicolai, and many more...
+Float fmax
I was about to write something similar. I experienced strange bahavior of Playground window under Pharo 4, and before reporting it I try it under Pharo 5. It was fixed. This little thing remembers me, it is not obvius to have such a great project. So many thanks to everyone no only for this fix, but also for whole positive atmosphere around Pharo. Adam Dne Pá 16. ÅÃjna 2015 17:14:54, Jimmie Houchin napsal(a):
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
I know sometimes we get stuck in the minutiae and lose the big picture.
I just want to say thanks to all that have contributed to Pharo in big and small way. Thank you.
A special thanks to Stef, Marcus and company who have been working hard on this all the way back when it was still Squeak. Who had a vision for a clean, empowering, business ready, vision fulfilling Smalltalk inspired tool we call Pharo. Thanks.
And a thanks to Eliot and all who contribute on the VM side of things. Enabling us to have a nicely performing and stable vm to run the Pharo image.
My apologies for not naming everyone who deserves thanks. I intend no offense to anyone not named, but also deserving. Your names are included in all the contributor documentation. Thanks.
And while I am being thankful, which is a good habit for all of us to be in. Being thankful not only improves the spirits of those being thanked. But those of us who are grateful are the biggest beneficiaries.
I want to take time to appreciate some things in Pharo that make us appreciate having a tool like Pharo and which distinguishes itself from other languages and environments. I think these things either distinguish themselves either in the relative uniqueness or in quality of their implementation. They are not necessarily distinguishing from other Smalltalks but from other non-Smalltalk languages.
Superior persistent live object environment. This is the game changer and affects and enables all other benefits. """I'm not complaining. I know that there is a good chance that we break the system when improving it. I have no problem with that and I prefer a living system with some bugs for a while than a dead system with no bug""" Stef - Sept. 7, 2015
IDE, debugging and refactoring, all live, all the time.
Because of the truly persistent live environment, there is no concept of shutdown, restart. We only know hibernate and resume. This is to use OS terms. For me this is an amazing boost to productivity. I can at any time save my image. Even close my saved image and resume exactly where I stopped. At any time, on any supported OS, on any machine. Powerful.
There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs. If I am not in Pharo, even if that language has an amazing notebook or repl available. It is nothing like coding in the live environment. The separation of editor and the compiler and/or application or VM makes development not as smooth and fluid. Even if I can enter and execute code in a notebook or repl to explore and learn in a version of a live environment. I still at some point have to leave my editing environment and write, edit and save my source code. And yes there are languages, editors, IDEs and tools that attempt to close the gap. But no, there still is a significant gap. The edited source code is the only thing that persists. Everything that gets executed in the repl or notebook is transient and will go away.
MIT, equivalent or better licensed ecosystem.
For me these are game changers. They set a standard by which I view any other programming experience. Thusly all other programming experience falls far short.
Whenever I (we) experience a present weakness in Pharo. Remember the above. Not only does Pharo have these distinguishing factors. I do not know of any language or environment which even has a culture or worldview of programming which seeks to bring these features to their favored language or tools.
Every time I have to restart my computer I think, Smalltalk solved this decades ago. Ugh!!! Where is my Pharo machine. :)
If you have any Pharo distinctives that you appreciate and would like to share. Reply and let us know. What I mean by distinctive is something that Pharo (or Smalltalk) has that is either not in other languages or is in general significantly inferior. Especially those that other languages have no vision to ever have. It just isn't a part of who they are.
If we keep these things before us as we work through the tedious work of cleaning the image, repairing fail attempts at various things. Or anything that may be a frustration for the moment, but is temporary. Remember what we gain and are blessed with having, that we would lose any where else. Or at a minimum have a far inferior substitute. And look forward to what we will have as these things become complete. The future is ours. Let's enjoy the journey.
Just some thoughts in my head I wanted to let out. This is reminder to me. If any of you are blessed and inspired, that is a plus.
Thanks and Shalom.
Jimmie
Thanks very much for your thoughts Jimmie. Day to day, its easy to take for granted what we have. On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
I know sometimes we get stuck in the minutiae and lose the big picture.
I just want to say thanks to all that have contributed to Pharo in big and small way. Thank you.
A special thanks to Stef, Marcus and company who have been working hard on this all the way back when it was still Squeak. Who had a vision for a clean, empowering, business ready, vision fulfilling Smalltalk inspired tool we call Pharo. Thanks.
Stef's "Pharo Vision" [1] document was a big part of what drew me to Pharo. Not necessarily what was in it, but more just that there was such a vision. [1] https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/download.php/30434/PharoVision.pdf
And a thanks to Eliot and all who contribute on the VM side of things. Enabling us to have a nicely performing and stable vm to run the Pharo image.
...
I want to take time to appreciate some things in Pharo that make us appreciate having a tool like Pharo and which distinguishes itself from other languages and environments. I think these things either distinguish themselves either in the relative uniqueness or in quality of their implementation. They are not necessarily distinguishing from other Smalltalks but from other non-Smalltalk languages.
Superior persistent live object environment. This is the game changer and affects and enables all other benefits.
IDE, debugging and refactoring, all live, all the time.
The debugger (within a live environment) does it for me. Its what make using Pharo fun.
Because of the truly persistent live environment, there is no concept of shutdown, restart. We only know hibernate and resume. This is to use OS terms. For me this is an amazing boost to productivity. I can at any time save my image. Even close my saved image and resume exactly where I stopped. At any time, on any supported OS, on any machine. Powerful.
There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs.
I view that we do have an edit/compile/run loop, its just really tight loop! I recently had a passing thought we could market Pharo as REPL+. In addition: The ability for the system (and community culture) to evolve a live running system. This is ideal for applications like control systems for industrial plants running 365x24. For example an alumina refinery where kilometers of pipes carry fluids at 800 degree, which would solidify in the pipes if there was an 8hr power outage, which could essentially close the plant down permanently so you'd have to walk away from a billion dollar investment. Another example might be space faring robots. Pharo is not right now at the point where you might trust it for such an extreme purpose, but the potential is there. cheers -ben
On 10/18/2015 11:51 AM, Ben Coman wrote:
Thanks very much for your thoughts Jimmie. Day to day, its easy to take for granted what we have.
On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
I know sometimes we get stuck in the minutiae and lose the big picture.
I just want to say thanks to all that have contributed to Pharo in big and small way. Thank you.
A special thanks to Stef, Marcus and company who have been working hard on this all the way back when it was still Squeak. Who had a vision for a clean, empowering, business ready, vision fulfilling Smalltalk inspired tool we call Pharo. Thanks.
Stef's "Pharo Vision" [1] document was a big part of what drew me to Pharo. Not necessarily what was in it, but more just that there was such a vision.
[1] https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/download.php/30434/PharoVision.pdf
Absolutely. This is a very important thing. A vision that moves the community and project forward is exceptionally important. To me a project without a vision statement or at least a roadmap is direction less and quite possible dying. Show me some life before I invest my time.
And a thanks to Eliot and all who contribute on the VM side of things. Enabling us to have a nicely performing and stable vm to run the Pharo image. ... I want to take time to appreciate some things in Pharo that make us appreciate having a tool like Pharo and which distinguishes itself from other languages and environments. I think these things either distinguish themselves either in the relative uniqueness or in quality of their implementation. They are not necessarily distinguishing from other Smalltalks but from other non-Smalltalk languages.
Superior persistent live object environment. This is the game changer and affects and enables all other benefits.
IDE, debugging and refactoring, all live, all the time. The debugger (within a live environment) does it for me. Its what make using Pharo fun.
Exactly. You hit a bug, execution stops and you can start exploring the problem where the problem is. With live tools and the executing code available and inspectable. No dead stack trace saying go to another tool and look at line X and you might find your problem. Or it might be in a different file or ... And if that doesn't do it for you. Execute your program in another tool in order to debug and explore the executing code. To many separate, isolated and distinct processes and tools.
Because of the truly persistent live environment, there is no concept of shutdown, restart. We only know hibernate and resume. This is to use OS terms. For me this is an amazing boost to productivity. I can at any time save my image. Even close my saved image and resume exactly where I stopped. At any time, on any supported OS, on any machine. Powerful.
There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs. I view that we do have an edit/compile/run loop, its just really tight loop! I recently had a passing thought we could market Pharo as REPL+.
Here is what I was saying. In Pharo there is not separate tool for editing, then a different tool for compiling and running. Yes, there are distinct phases of process requiring editing, compiling and running in Pharo, But they all exist in a single process. In Pharo I can have multiple Workspaces/Playgrounds and multiple Code Browsers, Inspectors, Debuggers and Testing Tools all open at the same time. I can flow from one to another and they all be viewing, editing, executing, inspecting the same objects, instances. Where else can we have multiple editors, compilers, repls, and whatever tools, all operating on the same objects and instances? As wonderful as Jupyter may be, can it have multiple windows with a view into the same repl instance? Maybe? I don't know. But now throw into that picture your favorite editor or IDE. Can it have multiple files open and seamlessly edit the code running in that single repl instance? The same instance as is in the Jupyter. Even if you get all of those tools communicating via sockets or whatever to a single Python/Julia/??? instance. It is still a very poor comparison to the workflow in any Smalltalk. Then you get to the end of your workday. There is no save menu to persist the state of all of those tools and repl all working together. In Pharo, just one tool, Pharo. Everything exists inside Pharo. Wonderful.
In addition:
The ability for the system (and community culture) to evolve a live running system. This is ideal for applications like control systems for industrial plants running 365x24. For example an alumina refinery where kilometers of pipes carry fluids at 800 degree, which would solidify in the pipes if there was an 8hr power outage, which could essentially close the plant down permanently so you'd have to walk away from a billion dollar investment. Another example might be space faring robots. Pharo is not right now at the point where you might trust it for such an extreme purpose, but the potential is there.
Absolutely. The already existent, persistent live environment is a powerful thing. The fact that we have code in Pharo that is decades old and has never been in a state disconnected from a live, running environment is amazing. Where else do we find that? What other software, programming language has a vision to provide such facility? Most everything else is designed to build something which you release and run. Release from your edit, build, compile to a run environment. Smalltalk and therefore Pharo is ontological and not merely a tool to build something external to itself. This is a huge difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology One of the things I find inspiring in the talks by Richard Hipp about SQLite is the level of the quality of the code in SQLite. That its file format is stable and guaranteed. That its codebase has complete test coverage. Coverage sufficient for its use in avionics systems. http://sqlite.org/testing.html I know Pharo is not going to be used in such a system. But it would be interesting if we can have decent coverage on the core or kernel as the everything get reduced to a buildable system. Then test coverage can more easily be applied on a system which is smaller and understandable. I have no concept of how you do the vm. It would be nice to get to a point some day that certain quality standards can be insured to a certain point. Not necessarily to the extent that SQLite does. But to a nice level. But SQLite has money, supporters, paying for SQLite to have that level of coverage. That also makes a big difference. Thanks for engaging in the conversation. Jimmie
cheers -ben
On 19 Oct 2015, at 15:39, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/18/2015 11:51 AM, Ben Coman wrote:
Thanks very much for your thoughts Jimmie. Day to day, its easy to take for granted what we have.
On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
I know sometimes we get stuck in the minutiae and lose the big picture.
I just want to say thanks to all that have contributed to Pharo in big and small way. Thank you.
A special thanks to Stef, Marcus and company who have been working hard on this all the way back when it was still Squeak. Who had a vision for a clean, empowering, business ready, vision fulfilling Smalltalk inspired tool we call Pharo. Thanks.
Stef's "Pharo Vision" [1] document was a big part of what drew me to Pharo. Not necessarily what was in it, but more just that there was such a vision.
[1] https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/download.php/30434/PharoVision.pdf
Absolutely. This is a very important thing. A vision that moves the community and project forward is exceptionally important.
To me a project without a vision statement or at least a roadmap is direction less and quite possible dying. Show me some life before I invest my time.
We (Doru and me) will write a new roadmap over the next weeks⦠so many things are happening, we need to get the current planning and how everything fits into one document⦠Marcus
On 10/19/2015 08:59 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:
On 19 Oct 2015, at 15:39, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/18/2015 11:51 AM, Ben Coman wrote:
Thanks very much for your thoughts Jimmie. Day to day, its easy to take for granted what we have.
On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
I know sometimes we get stuck in the minutiae and lose the big picture.
I just want to say thanks to all that have contributed to Pharo in big and small way. Thank you.
A special thanks to Stef, Marcus and company who have been working hard on this all the way back when it was still Squeak. Who had a vision for a clean, empowering, business ready, vision fulfilling Smalltalk inspired tool we call Pharo. Thanks. Stef's "Pharo Vision" [1] document was a big part of what drew me to Pharo. Not necessarily what was in it, but more just that there was such a vision.
[1] https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/download.php/30434/PharoVision.pdf Absolutely. This is a very important thing. A vision that moves the community and project forward is exceptionally important.
To me a project without a vision statement or at least a roadmap is direction less and quite possible dying. Show me some life before I invest my time. We (Doru and me) will write a new roadmap over the next weeks⦠so many things are happening, we need to get the current planning and how everything fits into one documentâ¦
Marcus
Thank you both for doing this. It is a valuable asset to the community. It helps those of us who aren't driving the project to see where we are going and hopefully how we can help. Thank you both for all you do. I really enjoy your talk Nomads do not build Cathedrals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcoy5gwUvOA I believe this is an important thing for people coming to Pharo to understand about Pharo, its vision and its processes. I also love Doru's videos. Very inspirational. Some of the shorts are so dramatic with graphics and sound, I almost feel like I need to turn the lights out and get some popcorn. :) Thanks. Jimmie
We (Doru and me) will write a new roadmap over the next weeks⦠so many things are happening, we need to get the current planning and how everything fits into one documentâ¦
Marcus
Thank you both for doing this. It is a valuable asset to the community. It helps those of us who aren't driving the project to see where we are going and hopefully how we can help.
Thank you both for all you do. I really enjoy your talk Nomads do not build Cathedrals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcoy5gwUvOA
Thanks⦠I was not quite sure back then if I should give a talk like that⦠but in the end it worked, I think. I should do an iteration on it⦠I am collecting material about the topic, especially the feedback loop⦠It is so amazing that in a bootstrapping feedback loop, you do not need to reach perfection in each intermediate step to get the effects from the transient artefact to drive growth. Marcus
Marcus, On 20/10/15 00:36, Marcus Denker wrote:
Thanks⦠I was not quite sure back then if I should give a talk like that⦠but in the end it worked, I think.
I should do an iteration on it⦠I am collecting material about the topic, especially the feedback loopâ¦
It is so amazing that in a bootstrapping feedback loop, you do not need to reach perfection in each intermediate step to get the effects from the transient artefact to drive growth.
Marcus
Please do the iteration. I enjoyed the talk pretty much and the analogy of toilets and cathedrals works pretty well. I have seen this bootstrap loop into action several times, recently by adding SQLite support to my project, so yes, having this talks and proper analogies helps to tell the Pharo Story better. Cheers, Offray
Thank you both for doing this. It is a valuable asset to the community. It helps those of us who aren't driving the project to see where we are going and hopefully how we can help.
Thank you both for all you do. I really enjoy your talk Nomads do not build Cathedrals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcoy5gwUvOA
I believe this is an important thing for people coming to Pharo to understand about Pharo, its vision and its processes.
I also love Doru's videos. Very inspirational. Some of the shorts are so dramatic with graphics and sound, I almost feel like I need to turn the lights out and get some popcorn. :)
May be we should add a selected set of links on the web page with the Pharo vision :)
On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 10:10 PM, stepharo <stepharo@free.fr> wrote:
Thank you both for doing this. It is a valuable asset to the community. It helps those of us who aren't driving the project to see where we are going and hopefully how we can help.
Thank you both for all you do. I really enjoy your talk Nomads do not build Cathedrals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcoy5gwUvOA
I believe this is an important thing for people coming to Pharo to understand about Pharo, its vision and its processes.
I also love Doru's videos. Very inspirational. Some of the shorts are so dramatic with graphics and sound, I almost feel like I need to turn the lights out and get some popcorn. :)
May be we should add a selected set of links on the web page with the Pharo vision :)
Great idea. Video is a good medium for sharing vision.
Hi, Some notes below. On 19/10/15 08:39, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs.
I view that we do have an edit/compile/run loop, its just really tight loop! I recently had a passing thought we could market Pharo as REPL+.
Here is what I was saying. In Pharo there is not separate tool for editing, then a different tool for compiling and running. Yes, there are distinct phases of process requiring editing, compiling and running in Pharo, But they all exist in a single process.
In Pharo I can have multiple Workspaces/Playgrounds and multiple Code Browsers, Inspectors, Debuggers and Testing Tools all open at the same time. I can flow from one to another and they all be viewing, editing, executing, inspecting the same objects, instances.
Where else can we have multiple editors, compilers, repls, and whatever tools, all operating on the same objects and instances?
As wonderful as Jupyter may be, can it have multiple windows with a view into the same repl instance? Maybe? I don't know. But now throw into that picture your favorite editor or IDE. Can it have multiple files open and seamlessly edit the code running in that single repl instance? The same instance as is in the Jupyter.
Even if you get all of those tools communicating via sockets or whatever to a single Python/Julia/??? instance. It is still a very poor comparison to the workflow in any Smalltalk.
Then you get to the end of your workday. There is no save menu to persist the state of all of those tools and repl all working together.
In Pharo, just one tool, Pharo. Everything exists inside Pharo. Wonderful.
Talking about Jupyter/IPython, the portability and moldability of Pharo is something really empowering and difficult to find anywhere else (which doesn't diminish the advantages others' huge ecosystem, just we have different advantages). I wrote about my path from IPytho/Jupyter to Pharo in my over-publicized but under coded :-P project [1]: [1] http://mutabit.com/offray/static/blog/output/posts/grafoscopio-idea-and-init...
Absolutely. The already existent, persistent live environment is a powerful thing. The fact that we have code in Pharo that is decades old and has never been in a state disconnected from a live, running environment is amazing. Where else do we find that? What other software, programming language has a vision to provide such facility? Most everything else is designed to build something which you release and run. Release from your edit, build, compile to a run environment.
Smalltalk and therefore Pharo is ontological and not merely a tool to build something external to itself. This is a huge difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
One of the things I find inspiring in the talks by Richard Hipp about SQLite is the level of the quality of the code in SQLite. That its file format is stable and guaranteed. That its codebase has complete test coverage. Coverage sufficient for its use in avionics systems. http://sqlite.org/testing.html
I know Pharo is not going to be used in such a system. But it would be interesting if we can have decent coverage on the core or kernel as the everything get reduced to a buildable system. Then test coverage can more easily be applied on a system which is smaller and understandable. I have no concept of how you do the vm.
We could think on something like SQLite ubiquity for Pharo, not in the storage backend, but in the writing frontend (blogs, books, code snippets/scripts, data visualizations) with a portable "pocket infrastructure" (as I call it). Pharo is an awesome pocket infrastructure that can be run from a thumbdrive, computer sticker, low end server and anything between and beyond. And there are new scenarios, like open/citizen/garage science & research, activism, data journalims and others which lack of the proper tools for being really open, empowering and democratic and putting them exclusively on the "cloud" doesn't help that much. (A related idea on this track is on [2]) [2] https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/data/entries/data-kitchen-frictionle... So which are the places where the empowerment that Pharo/Smalltalk brings will be ubiquitous? (I always take my custom Pharo with my keys thumb drive). Nice to see we can effectively explore/build the future together. Thanks, Offray
The best way to thank us, is to contribute. So put your code where your mouth is and give a much needed helping hand. Suggestions and discussions is all good , but nothing beats old hard work ;) It can be a bug fix, a new library, a new gui tool, documentation, blog posts or just promotion to other coder of the merits of pharo. It does not matter how you will help only that you will do. As stef says and I will agree very much "Pharo is yours" , its a project that is unique and dares to go against the general practices and patterns of modern coding and define its own path and do things its own way and still boost productivity and be very useful. It looks like a simple toy on the surface but screams "nuclear bomb" in the deep. But in the end it depends on its own community to give the push it needs to keep going forward and the more the better. On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 6:36 PM Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas < offray@riseup.net> wrote:
Hi,
Some notes below.
On 19/10/15 08:39, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs.
I view that we do have an edit/compile/run loop, its just really tight loop! I recently had a passing thought we could market Pharo as REPL+.
Here is what I was saying. In Pharo there is not separate tool for editing, then a different tool for compiling and running. Yes, there are distinct phases of process requiring editing, compiling and running in Pharo, But they all exist in a single process.
In Pharo I can have multiple Workspaces/Playgrounds and multiple Code Browsers, Inspectors, Debuggers and Testing Tools all open at the same time. I can flow from one to another and they all be viewing, editing, executing, inspecting the same objects, instances.
Where else can we have multiple editors, compilers, repls, and whatever tools, all operating on the same objects and instances?
As wonderful as Jupyter may be, can it have multiple windows with a view into the same repl instance? Maybe? I don't know. But now throw into that picture your favorite editor or IDE. Can it have multiple files open and seamlessly edit the code running in that single repl instance? The same instance as is in the Jupyter.
Even if you get all of those tools communicating via sockets or whatever to a single Python/Julia/??? instance. It is still a very poor comparison to the workflow in any Smalltalk.
Then you get to the end of your workday. There is no save menu to persist the state of all of those tools and repl all working together.
In Pharo, just one tool, Pharo. Everything exists inside Pharo. Wonderful.
Talking about Jupyter/IPython, the portability and moldability of Pharo is something really empowering and difficult to find anywhere else (which doesn't diminish the advantages others' huge ecosystem, just we have different advantages). I wrote about my path from IPytho/Jupyter to Pharo in my over-publicized but under coded :-P project [1]:
[1]
http://mutabit.com/offray/static/blog/output/posts/grafoscopio-idea-and-init...
Absolutely. The already existent, persistent live environment is a powerful thing. The fact that we have code in Pharo that is decades old and has never been in a state disconnected from a live, running environment is amazing. Where else do we find that? What other software, programming language has a vision to provide such facility? Most everything else is designed to build something which you release and run. Release from your edit, build, compile to a run environment.
Smalltalk and therefore Pharo is ontological and not merely a tool to build something external to itself. This is a huge difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
One of the things I find inspiring in the talks by Richard Hipp about SQLite is the level of the quality of the code in SQLite. That its file format is stable and guaranteed. That its codebase has complete test coverage. Coverage sufficient for its use in avionics systems. http://sqlite.org/testing.html
I know Pharo is not going to be used in such a system. But it would be interesting if we can have decent coverage on the core or kernel as the everything get reduced to a buildable system. Then test coverage can more easily be applied on a system which is smaller and understandable. I have no concept of how you do the vm.
We could think on something like SQLite ubiquity for Pharo, not in the storage backend, but in the writing frontend (blogs, books, code snippets/scripts, data visualizations) with a portable "pocket infrastructure" (as I call it). Pharo is an awesome pocket infrastructure that can be run from a thumbdrive, computer sticker, low end server and anything between and beyond. And there are new scenarios, like open/citizen/garage science & research, activism, data journalims and others which lack of the proper tools for being really open, empowering and democratic and putting them exclusively on the "cloud" doesn't help that much. (A related idea on this track is on [2])
[2]
https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/data/entries/data-kitchen-frictionle...
So which are the places where the empowerment that Pharo/Smalltalk brings will be ubiquitous? (I always take my custom Pharo with my keys thumb drive).
Nice to see we can effectively explore/build the future together.
Thanks,
Offray
I like the nuclear bomb image :-) On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 6:57 PM, Dimitris Chloupis <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
The best way to thank us, is to contribute. So put your code where your mouth is and give a much needed helping hand. Suggestions and discussions is all good , but nothing beats old hard work ;)
It can be a bug fix, a new library, a new gui tool, documentation, blog posts or just promotion to other coder of the merits of pharo. It does not matter how you will help only that you will do.
As stef says and I will agree very much "Pharo is yours" , its a project that is unique and dares to go against the general practices and patterns of modern coding and define its own path and do things its own way and still boost productivity and be very useful. It looks like a simple toy on the surface but screams "nuclear bomb" in the deep. But in the end it depends on its own community to give the push it needs to keep going forward and the more the better.
On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 6:36 PM Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas < offray@riseup.net> wrote:
Hi,
Some notes below.
On 19/10/15 08:39, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs.
I view that we do have an edit/compile/run loop, its just really tight loop! I recently had a passing thought we could market Pharo as REPL+.
Here is what I was saying. In Pharo there is not separate tool for editing, then a different tool for compiling and running. Yes, there are distinct phases of process requiring editing, compiling and running in Pharo, But they all exist in a single process.
In Pharo I can have multiple Workspaces/Playgrounds and multiple Code Browsers, Inspectors, Debuggers and Testing Tools all open at the same time. I can flow from one to another and they all be viewing, editing, executing, inspecting the same objects, instances.
Where else can we have multiple editors, compilers, repls, and whatever tools, all operating on the same objects and instances?
As wonderful as Jupyter may be, can it have multiple windows with a view into the same repl instance? Maybe? I don't know. But now throw into that picture your favorite editor or IDE. Can it have multiple files open and seamlessly edit the code running in that single repl instance? The same instance as is in the Jupyter.
Even if you get all of those tools communicating via sockets or whatever to a single Python/Julia/??? instance. It is still a very poor comparison to the workflow in any Smalltalk.
Then you get to the end of your workday. There is no save menu to persist the state of all of those tools and repl all working together.
In Pharo, just one tool, Pharo. Everything exists inside Pharo. Wonderful.
Talking about Jupyter/IPython, the portability and moldability of Pharo is something really empowering and difficult to find anywhere else (which doesn't diminish the advantages others' huge ecosystem, just we have different advantages). I wrote about my path from IPytho/Jupyter to Pharo in my over-publicized but under coded :-P project [1]:
[1]
http://mutabit.com/offray/static/blog/output/posts/grafoscopio-idea-and-init...
Absolutely. The already existent, persistent live environment is a powerful thing. The fact that we have code in Pharo that is decades old and has never been in a state disconnected from a live, running environment is amazing. Where else do we find that? What other software, programming language has a vision to provide such facility? Most everything else is designed to build something which you release and run. Release from your edit, build, compile to a run environment.
Smalltalk and therefore Pharo is ontological and not merely a tool to build something external to itself. This is a huge difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
One of the things I find inspiring in the talks by Richard Hipp about SQLite is the level of the quality of the code in SQLite. That its file format is stable and guaranteed. That its codebase has complete test coverage. Coverage sufficient for its use in avionics systems. http://sqlite.org/testing.html
I know Pharo is not going to be used in such a system. But it would be interesting if we can have decent coverage on the core or kernel as the everything get reduced to a buildable system. Then test coverage can more easily be applied on a system which is smaller and understandable. I have no concept of how you do the vm.
We could think on something like SQLite ubiquity for Pharo, not in the storage backend, but in the writing frontend (blogs, books, code snippets/scripts, data visualizations) with a portable "pocket infrastructure" (as I call it). Pharo is an awesome pocket infrastructure that can be run from a thumbdrive, computer sticker, low end server and anything between and beyond. And there are new scenarios, like open/citizen/garage science & research, activism, data journalims and others which lack of the proper tools for being really open, empowering and democratic and putting them exclusively on the "cloud" doesn't help that much. (A related idea on this track is on [2])
[2]
https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/data/entries/data-kitchen-frictionle...
So which are the places where the empowerment that Pharo/Smalltalk brings will be ubiquitous? (I always take my custom Pharo with my keys thumb drive).
Nice to see we can effectively explore/build the future together.
Thanks,
Offray
Hi, On 19/10/15 11:57, Dimitris Chloupis wrote:
The best way to thank us, is to contribute. So put your code where your mouth is and give a much needed helping hand. Suggestions and discussions is all good , but nothing beats old hard work ;)
It can be a bug fix, a new library, a new gui tool, documentation, blog posts or just promotion to other coder of the merits of pharo. It does not matter how you will help only that you will do.
I think that mos of us are trying to thank in several ways, as you said. Cheers, Offray
Sorry not to react I got sick and I'm still quite fussy. Thanks for your mail. Stef Le 17/10/15 00:14, Jimmie Houchin a écrit :
Sometimes conversations revolve around perceived deficiencies in Pharo. What Pharo is missing. Or what Pharo doesn't do as well as my previous language, my favorite language, my other language, etc... These conversations are necessary to understand where Pharo is and to provide understanding on where Pharo needs some work.
However, not enough gets said sometimes for all the goodness Pharo already provides and thanks to all of those who have contributed over the years to Smalltalk/Pharo.
I know sometimes we get stuck in the minutiae and lose the big picture.
I just want to say thanks to all that have contributed to Pharo in big and small way. Thank you.
A special thanks to Stef, Marcus and company who have been working hard on this all the way back when it was still Squeak. Who had a vision for a clean, empowering, business ready, vision fulfilling Smalltalk inspired tool we call Pharo. Thanks.
And a thanks to Eliot and all who contribute on the VM side of things. Enabling us to have a nicely performing and stable vm to run the Pharo image.
My apologies for not naming everyone who deserves thanks. I intend no offense to anyone not named, but also deserving. Your names are included in all the contributor documentation. Thanks.
And while I am being thankful, which is a good habit for all of us to be in. Being thankful not only improves the spirits of those being thanked. But those of us who are grateful are the biggest beneficiaries.
I want to take time to appreciate some things in Pharo that make us appreciate having a tool like Pharo and which distinguishes itself from other languages and environments. I think these things either distinguish themselves either in the relative uniqueness or in quality of their implementation. They are not necessarily distinguishing from other Smalltalks but from other non-Smalltalk languages.
Superior persistent live object environment. This is the game changer and affects and enables all other benefits. """I'm not complaining. I know that there is a good chance that we break the system when improving it. I have no problem with that and I prefer a living system with some bugs for a while than a dead system with no bug""" Stef - Sept. 7, 2015
IDE, debugging and refactoring, all live, all the time.
Because of the truly persistent live environment, there is no concept of shutdown, restart. We only know hibernate and resume. This is to use OS terms. For me this is an amazing boost to productivity. I can at any time save my image. Even close my saved image and resume exactly where I stopped. At any time, on any supported OS, on any machine. Powerful.
There truly is no edit, compile, run cycle similar to other languages, even dynamically typed languages with REPLs. If I am not in Pharo, even if that language has an amazing notebook or repl available. It is nothing like coding in the live environment. The separation of editor and the compiler and/or application or VM makes development not as smooth and fluid. Even if I can enter and execute code in a notebook or repl to explore and learn in a version of a live environment. I still at some point have to leave my editing environment and write, edit and save my source code. And yes there are languages, editors, IDEs and tools that attempt to close the gap. But no, there still is a significant gap. The edited source code is the only thing that persists. Everything that gets executed in the repl or notebook is transient and will go away.
MIT, equivalent or better licensed ecosystem.
For me these are game changers. They set a standard by which I view any other programming experience. Thusly all other programming experience falls far short.
Whenever I (we) experience a present weakness in Pharo. Remember the above. Not only does Pharo have these distinguishing factors. I do not know of any language or environment which even has a culture or worldview of programming which seeks to bring these features to their favored language or tools.
Every time I have to restart my computer I think, Smalltalk solved this decades ago. Ugh!!! Where is my Pharo machine. :)
If you have any Pharo distinctives that you appreciate and would like to share. Reply and let us know. What I mean by distinctive is something that Pharo (or Smalltalk) has that is either not in other languages or is in general significantly inferior. Especially those that other languages have no vision to ever have. It just isn't a part of who they are.
If we keep these things before us as we work through the tedious work of cleaning the image, repairing fail attempts at various things. Or anything that may be a frustration for the moment, but is temporary. Remember what we gain and are blessed with having, that we would lose any where else. Or at a minimum have a far inferior substitute. And look forward to what we will have as these things become complete. The future is ours. Let's enjoy the journey.
Just some thoughts in my head I wanted to let out. This is reminder to me. If any of you are blessed and inspired, that is a plus.
Thanks and Shalom.
Jimmie
participants (10)
-
Adam -
Ben Coman -
Dimitris Chloupis -
Hilaire -
Jimmie Houchin -
Marcus Denker -
Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas -
Peter Uhnák -
phil＠highoctane.be -
stepharo