Hi Mayuresh, Thanks for sharing your background. My advice would be to simply download it and "suck it and see".
I've got twenty years on you and have spent my whole career working with computers (punched cards anyone?). I still get a buzz out of programming in Smalltalk. The reason it is such a joy is due to the ultimate simplicity of the grammar of the language. It fits on one page: http://chronos-st.blogspot.com/2007/12/smalltalk-in-one-page.html. And also that it is "Turtles all the way down" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down). Well mostly, but then there's access to C libraries via the FFI. In other development environments, you're mostly stuck with what you've got. With Smalltalk, you can dig under the hood. For Pharo, this is just as well, as some parts of it are a bit flakey. You mentioned Iceberg. I have had nothing but trouble with it and it's fair to say put me off using Git with Pharo. Other things are an absolute joy - check out Roassal for example. One of the highest quality pieces of code I've come across in my extensive career. Speaking of which, it has come to an end and what am I doing in my retirement? - working on a project that I plan on sending out into the real world! This has its challenges in Pharo, and this is where other platforms excel and are designed for (along with substantial financial backing), but I believe it is doable in Pharo. Hopefully it will be a "real world" use case! All the best with whatever path you choose... Cheers, Stewart On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 7:11 PM mayur...@kathe.in via Pharo-users < pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> wrote: > Hello, > > In response to my email below, I received 5 interesting responses. I thank > those people for writing-in. > > Here is my take on what I've understood and why I am still hesitant to go > along. > My comments on those responses are further below, but, at the moment, let > me explain my situation. > > I am a 46 year-old who has been programming computers since the age of 16. > I used to be a highly sought-after programmer till the year 2000, when due > to circumstances beyond my control, my life and career got destroyed > completely. > In fact, I was so highly valued, that in spite of me being from India, I > was pursued by Verizon US. > I am now confined to my home (mostly) and I have very little to do, in the > past 12 years I have not programmed anything beyond a basic prime-number > tester and a fibonacci-sequence generator in C. > I am getting my life back in order and I need some occupation, though, not > necessarily one from which I would demand financial returns. > I have been dilly-dallying on a decision, primarily because I am unable to > take a call on whether to pursue my love for the low-level (x64 assembler + > Forth) or the extremely high-level (work involving reasoning using symbolic > inference) using a Smalltalk (either Squeak or Pharo). > > The above is not meant to elicit sympathy, but has been tacked-in just to > give potential advisers an idea about my state. > > Onward to my take on the responses I received to my first email. > > As Noury Bouraqadi and Stephane Ducasse mentioned: > It's not about what you can do, but it's about how you do it. > I'd say, that is the basic problem with all Smalltalk aficionados. > The whole environment is such a joy to work with that it is addictive, to > the extent that developers forget that it is the "what you can do" which is > of utmost importance. > > Jupiter Jones email provided the most amount of real-world use-cases. > Though, I am interested in understanding how to use Pharo as the > development tool to be able to release code via GemStone Smalltalk. > Is it so that Seaside runs identically on Pharo as well as GemStone > Smalltalk? > So, in a sense, Seaside would to Smalltalk, what "Ruby on Rails" is to > Ruby. > > Tim Mackinnon is very correct in observing that relative to C# and Swift, > Smalltalk (and hence Pharo) is very compact, simple and approachable. > Though, I did not understand his statement about conditional logic > becoming easier to understand after working especially with Smalltalk. > Would he care to elaborate? > Also, on Tim's allusion to Lisp being a cousin, well, Smalltalkers had > better acknowledge the fact that most Lispers "look down" upon Smalltalk > and do not spare any opportunity to berate its users/developers (this is > from personal experience). > > Along those lines, I would also like to get an explanation from Jupiter > Jones' for "how do you do an if/then?" which as he states leads to a > "mind-blown" moment. > > Thank you, > > ~Mayuresh > > On Saturday, January 14, 2023 01:31 PM IST, "mayur...@kathe.in via > Pharo-users" <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > This isn't a mail intended to troll this community. > > > > I am genuinely curious about what would be the type of use cases which > would be exemplary for Pharo? > > > > Now-a-days, anything one could have accomplished solely with Smalltalk > (and hence Pharo) can be accomplished with a number of modern programming > languages and their associated frameworks, e.g. Google's Dart with Flutter, > Apple Swift with SwiftUI, Microsoft's C# with WinUI. > > And such languages and their associated frameworks are built from the > ground-up for a particular platform, while Pharo does not have any such > targets, which usually renders graphical applications built using Pharo to > "look like" aliens. > > > > What does stand-out regarding Smalltalk (and hence Pharo) is the > superior developer experience furnished as a result of the true object > system combined with a full graphical environment. > > In addition to that, Pharo, specifically, provides advanced tools like > Git integration, etc. > > > > But, are these things all that there are to be considered enough for > highlighting the full inherent power of Pharo? > > > > Again, apologies if anyone found the subject line as well as the message > body to be troll-ish. That has not been the intent. > > > > Kind regards, > > > > ~Mayuresh >
