"Am I supposed to advertise Pharo the same way? To a beginner?" yes, as they say "truth will set you free". Don't try to lie to a beginner, dont try to exaggerate , dont try to make Pharo into a holy grail. Be sincere , be accurate. The begineer may not like Pharo but at least will respect it and the community.
The community and include myself in it have been working hard to improve the situation for beginners. I think things are in the right road. Pharo-users mailing list has exploded lately and that shows that people care about Pharo. Still a ton can be done but things are always way harder than they look and this why they always take time. And no you cannot replace Pharo with Swift, Pharo is irreplaceable really . There is no software out there that does what Pharo does and does it better, so Pharo is unique. The question is that if you care about what Pharo offers, if not then obviously you will choose another languages and other tools. Pharo comes with its own set of disadvantages as well as all solutions out there. In the end it comes down to making a choice. I love the Pharo workflow , I decided to stick around. But someone else will chose something else, thats fine. I think what Stef is trying to say is that if the user really loves Pharo , then he will want Pharo to improve and contributing is the best way to ensure a better future for Pharo. Personally I dont think we need to be reminded of this, I think its dead obvious if someone falls in love with an open source software he or she will contribute to it sooner or later, in a small or big way. This is why afterall open source has been so extremely succesfull.
