For me the journey has been a bit diffirent. Secretely I was always look for a language that think diffirently and followed a more logical approach compared to converved approach of the vast majority of languages that follow C syntax. So I loved the Pharo diffirence.
My real struggle was the lack of documentation, I was used to be spoon fed with other languages. My dismay is that many times here I was recommended to start reading pharo code. Suffice to say I was annoyed and frustrated because I was struggling to learn the basics of Pharo and foremost I was more annoyed that people insisted that code readability can replace documentation. Fast forward a couple years later and I have to admit they are kinda correct. Documentation cannot be replaced by code readability for begineers but as I get more and more experienced and familar with pharo and its culture and its libraries the more code I read the less I care about documentation. Unfortunately Pharo code readability is kinda a myth because there is a plenty of code inside pharo that is a huge pain to understand, Auto-completition is one example I struggle for hours and hour to understand and I failed. PharoLauncher is another. But I am getting better and I do believe one day I will be capable enough to read even unreadable pharo code. So I have to say to all those people that insisted that I should learn to read pharo code, thank you, this is indeed a very valuable skill to have. And I will even dare say it more important than documentation because because it does not explain only the what , but also the how and the why, which I think are very important. I completely agree with Esteban, learning a language is an investment. Someone tries Python for a month and finds it slow and goes to C++ , others invest their life implementing a high performance JIT VM like PyPy and create or python features in the language like string manipulation that outperforms C++. In the end its all about the hard work you do with your language and same applies to Pharo as well. Pharo can be used, every where, for anything at any time. Its an incredible useful tool , that inherits a lot of great designs from smalltalk, squeak and improves upon them. Something tells me I may be a pharo user for a long , long time. On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 7:52 PM Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas < off...@riseup.net> wrote: > Hi, > > On 03/01/16 08:08, Saša Janiška wrote: > > > >> What I can tell you is that Pharo is **really** productive. > >> I suggest you to jump and get the feel for real. > >> Then do an analysis of pro and cons. > >> Doing that in the air is just doing it in the air. > > That's good advice...I'm a bit reluctant having feeling there are lot of > > things to learn before really starting, e.g. with some other languages > > it is very easy to provide call to C libs and explore things, while here > > it seems that learning curve is steeper...but I'll jump into it. > > > I was in a similar place half an a year ago: > > https://twitter.com/offrayLC/status/493979407011561473 > > This is what I'm doing today: > > https://offray.withknown.com/2016/matrix-sunburst-visualization-example > > So despite of the culture shock, it has been an excellent joyride! I > have never been able to express myself and feel as creative in any other > language/environment as with Pharo/Smalltalk. > > Is a different, but valuable travel to take. > > Cheers, > > Offray > > > >
