Hi, Maybe Pharo's switch to Tonel remind people now on Java or C# class files and thats why they ask for the "traditional editing". But remember that Kent Beck once said: "I mean, source code in files; how quaint, how seventies!". Tonel is a readable storage format, you could have the source code even in a database (with an ENVY and STORE like approach)
And ouch .... that video really hurts and I think it will be more disturbing than helpful especially to many newbees now trying to use their favourite text editor for Pharo coding instead of really learning about a very flexible IDE and workflow with browsing, interactively inspecting and refactorings. Abusing an external text editor is a slap in the face of anyone building good tooling support into Smalltalk over many years. I know Dimitris tried to help people (as often) - but I guess this video really gives a false impression and guides people the wrong way. Sorry - but I'm reminded on pictures like this: https://i1.wp.com/ecbiz168.inmotionhosting.com/~perfor21/performancemanagementcompanyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/magnet-image-sws-one-no-border.gif Dont get me wrong: VisualStudio/VisualStudio Code, Eclipse, IntelliJ and others are nice, I use them too for other languages or tasks. Nicely done - but still too static. Often I wished only half of the money invested into such IDE's could have been spend on better Smalltalk tooling. Remember: once VisualAge for Java got a price as the first usuable Java IDE (when people used Notepad to write *.java files) - but underneath it was fully coded in Smalltalk and the Java debugger was the Smalltalk debugger running the java subset of bytecodes. At that time VisualAge for Smalltalk was the base for the full VisualAge series (VisualAge for Java, Visual Age for C++ and others). But Smalltalk at that time unfortunately was expensive, licensing a problem and big vendors had to prove one can do deliver similar things with Java too - leading to Eclipse and others. But the best part on Eclipse was not Java - it was the pluggability concept. The extension point mechanisms of the platform provide a clear separation leading to a nice ecosystem of available plugins - but still it is hard to write and debug a custom extension. A Smalltalk environment is still more dynamic, more lively where you can browse, inspect and adjust nearly anything. And yes - you can even shoot yourself in the foot. And yes we know Pharo does not provide fancy widgets yet or latest text editing features - but this is a tribute to community resources. >From my experience: if one free's his mind and gives up traditional >programming habits learned in mainstream languages he will enjoy the Pharo >journey much more. Bye T.
