subject:"Re\: \[Pharo\-dev\] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference"


On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it 
should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it 
even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming 
environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will 
make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get 
started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be 
involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.


http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk


In this thread and many others there is this debate as to whether Pharo 
is a Smalltalk or is Smalltalk Inspired.


I find the Smalltalk Inspired arguments to be unpersuasive. To be 
Smalltalk Inspired is to say that you are not a Smalltalk. It is to say 
that Pharo is not Smalltalk but inspired by it.


I find that reasoning patently false.

First of all everything in Pharo begins from a Smalltalk image. It comes 
from Squeak Smalltalk which comes from Apple Smalltalk. etc.


Pharo has an isA relationship with Smalltalk, not an isInspiredBy 
relationship. It may change and add features, but as has been stated 
before, Smalltalk isn't a static idea or artifact. It has always been a 
dynamic live environment in which to change itself into something it 
believed to be better. By removing features and by growing them.


Smalltalk (an instance of SmalltalkImage), SmalltalkImage, 
SmalltalkImageTest, SmalltalkEditingState are all part of the Pharo 
Smalltalk image.


The Pharo image is a Smalltalk image. It says so inside the image itself.

Where are we hosting are source code?  Would that be SmalltalkHub?
Lets see something.
http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo

Okay, Pharo might be doing things that would break compatibility with 
other Smalltalks. And that causes some people pain and grief. However 
that does not make Pharo not a Smalltalk. Was Smalltalk 76 constrained 
by backward compatibility with Smalltalk 72? Or Smalltalk 80 with either 
Smalltalk 76 or 72?  No!


Is it a requirement of Pharo to be constrained by other Smalltalk 
implementations in order to still be a Smalltalk. No!


And then there is the argument of the outside worlds perception of 
Smalltalk. Since when does the perception of the outside world change 
whether or not Pharo is a Smalltalk? If the outside world changed their 
mind and decided Smalltalk is wonderful, does Pharo then all of the 
sudden become a Smalltalk? Ugh!


We are who we are. Our roots are our roots. Pharo should be happy and 
proud to be a Smalltalk. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of 
innovation. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of inventing the 
future.


We have decided to be marketing driven. Marketing is important. But 
marketing should determine who we are. And we should engage in 
disingenuous marketing practice trying to hide our roots or who we are.


Why do we things distancing ourselves from Smalltalk advantages us? Just 
because there are lots of uneducated people who have the wrong idea 
about Smalltalk. Clojure embraced its Lisp heritage and is thriving. 
Lisp has every bit as much baggage.


This talk which inspired this thread called Pharo as Smalltalk. He said, 
Pharo Smalltalk throughout the presentation. So in the mind of the 
presenter and now in the mind of the audience at the conference and of 
the video, Pharo is a Smalltalk. So now are we to go about re-educating 
all these people that Pharo is not a Smalltalk but is rather Smalltalk 
Inspired?


We don't require the outside world's permission. We don't need their 
approval. We would like to have a reasonable and sufficient number of 
them to catch the Pharo Smalltalk vision and become a part of the 
family. Do we really desire everybody. No. Do we desire those people who 
are so closed minded that the mention of Smalltalk closes their mind 
because of their ignorance. I don't think so.


Smalltalk is different. Pharo is Smalltalk and is different. There will 
be those who don't like it because of the baggage they bring, not the 
baggage we bring. And that is okay. All of us think different. People 
need to embrace what empowers them and quit complaining about what 
empowers somebody else. We need to embrace empowering people who 
understand Smalltalk not the people who don't get it for whatever 
reason. Let those people go and be empowered somewhere else. We and they 
will both be better off.


Feel free to shred and destroy my arguments. I am proud to use 
Smalltalk. And currently Pharo is the Smalltalk I am choosing to use. 
Currently I am studying C. A C library is required for my project and in 
order to use Pharo and use this library, I need sufficient C skills.


My opinion

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread Ben Coman


Jimmie Houchin wrote:

On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It 
seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar 
Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so 
slightly different, from the programming environment, to the 1-based 
arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at 
familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get started 
on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be 
involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.


http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk 



In this thread and many others there is this debate as to whether 
Pharo is a Smalltalk or is Smalltalk Inspired.


I find the Smalltalk Inspired arguments to be unpersuasive. To be 
Smalltalk Inspired is to say that you are not a Smalltalk. It is to 
say that Pharo is not Smalltalk but inspired by it.


I find that reasoning patently false.

First of all everything in Pharo begins from a Smalltalk image. It 
comes from Squeak Smalltalk which comes from Apple Smalltalk. etc.


Pharo has an isA relationship with Smalltalk, not an isInspiredBy 
relationship. It may change and add features, but as has been stated 
before, Smalltalk isn't a static idea or artifact. It has always been 
a dynamic live environment in which to change itself into something it 
believed to be better. By removing features and by growing them.


Smalltalk (an instance of SmalltalkImage), SmalltalkImage, 
SmalltalkImageTest, SmalltalkEditingState are all part of the Pharo 
Smalltalk image.


The Pharo image is a Smalltalk image. It says so inside the image itself.

Where are we hosting are source code?  Would that be SmalltalkHub?
Lets see something.
http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo

Okay, Pharo might be doing things that would break compatibility with 
other Smalltalks. And that causes some people pain and grief. However 
that does not make Pharo not a Smalltalk. Was Smalltalk 76 constrained 
by backward compatibility with Smalltalk 72? Or Smalltalk 80 with 
either Smalltalk 76 or 72?  No!


Is it a requirement of Pharo to be constrained by other Smalltalk 
implementations in order to still be a Smalltalk. No!


And then there is the argument of the outside worlds perception of 
Smalltalk. Since when does the perception of the outside world change 
whether or not Pharo is a Smalltalk? If the outside world changed 
their mind and decided Smalltalk is wonderful, does Pharo then all of 
the sudden become a Smalltalk? Ugh!


We are who we are. Our roots are our roots. Pharo should be happy and 
proud to be a Smalltalk. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage 
of innovation. A Smalltalk that is continuing the heritage of 
inventing the future.


We have decided to be marketing driven. Marketing is important. But 
marketing should determine who we are. And we should engage in 
disingenuous marketing practice trying to hide our roots or who we are.


Why do we things distancing ourselves from Smalltalk advantages us? 
Just because there are lots of uneducated people who have the wrong 
idea about Smalltalk. Clojure embraced its Lisp heritage and is 
thriving. Lisp has every bit as much baggage.


This talk which inspired this thread called Pharo as Smalltalk. He 
said, Pharo Smalltalk throughout the presentation. So in the mind of 
the presenter and now in the mind of the audience at the conference 
and of the video, Pharo is a Smalltalk. So now are we to go about 
re-educating all these people that Pharo is not a Smalltalk but is 
rather Smalltalk Inspired?


We don't require the outside world's permission. We don't need their 
approval. We would like to have a reasonable and sufficient number of 
them to catch the Pharo Smalltalk vision and become a part of the 
family. Do we really desire everybody. No. Do we desire those people 
who are so closed minded that the mention of Smalltalk closes their 
mind because of their ignorance. I don't think so.


Smalltalk is different. Pharo is Smalltalk and is different. There 
will be those who don't like it because of the baggage they bring, not 
the baggage we bring. And that is okay. All of us think different. 
People need to embrace what empowers them and quit complaining about 
what empowers somebody else. We need to embrace empowering people who 
understand Smalltalk not the people who don't get it for whatever 
reason. Let those people go and be empowered somewhere else. We and 
they will both be better off.


Feel free to shred and destroy my arguments. I am proud to use 
Smalltalk. And currently Pharo is the Smalltalk I am choosing to use. 
Currently I am studying C. A C library is required for my project and 
in order to use Pharo and use this library, I need sufficient C skills.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80.

But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014.
Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 1976. ...

And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is not 
KR, or C89, C90 or C99?
Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with Python 
2.x which is dominant?


Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this era 
to do things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity in the 
image. We need the image to be clean. We need to learn the lessons we as 
Smalltalker's have learned in the last 24 years and apply them to Pharo 
Smalltalk. And I believe that is much of what Pharo is attempting to do.


Noel in his talk said that Smalltalk doesn't play well with others. And 
with Pharo it still isn't as easy as in other languages like Python, 
Ruby, Lua, etc. But with NativeBoost we have a tool which enables us to 
do much. And NativeBoost isn't finished. I believe when NativeBoost is 
fully mature and the vm/image has sufficiently changed to enable us. We 
will have one of the best plays with others well stories.


I know in the app I am writing, NativeBoost's current condition 
struggled with my library. It often crashed. This library has to deal 
with a C Thread. Which is why I am spending my current time studying C.


Whether or not the Smalltalk Inspired crowd likes it, the moment some 
else declares that Pharo is a Smalltalk the Smalltalk Inspired marketing 
is tanked. The cat is out of the bag.


The Reddit thread demonstrates this. People went to the new website. 
They read the current marketing and were confused. What is this Pharo 
thing. And in the thread it comes out that Pharo is a Smalltalk. Lets 
make that clear up front. Then lets define what it means to be Pharo 
Smalltalk.


Here is an unfortunate quote from that thread.


emaringolo 1 point an hour ago
Pharo is aimed to do serious/business development, and it's been 
reshaping itself since its conception (several years ago when it forked 
from Squeak).
It doesn't want to have any backward or historic compatibility with 
other Smalltalks.
You can see its changelogs and the roadmap for future versions to see 
how it is different, and how it will be different.



This makes it sound like Pharo wants remove compatibility simply for the 
sake of not being a Smalltalk. As opposed to what I believe Esteban 
meant. And yes I understand that English is not his native language, and 
there are many for whom it is, who still use it poorly. What I believe 
he meant, is that Pharo will not be constrained by backward 
compatibility. If a change or feature that is of value to Pharo 
Smalltalk. That feature will be done even if it means breaking backward 
compatibility with other Smalltalk 80 based Smalltalks. We are moving 
forward. But this does not invalidate Pharo being a Smalltalk. As has 
been stated before, breaking changes happened in Smalltalk 76 and 80.


Smalltalk has a wonderful heritage. It is not without its issues. 
However the good of Smalltalk is enormous. Take a look at this chart

http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/
Smalltalk is a big influence in the history of programming. This is 
something worth being a part of. Be proud of it.


Pharo needs to define what one vision of a modern Smalltalk is. Let us 
educate people of what our vision for Pharo Smalltalk is. And guess what 
folks its 2014. Before long it wont be. And before long the vision of 
Pharo 2014 will no longer be any more modern than Smalltalk 80. But 
neither Smalltalk 80 nor Pharo 3.0 constrain what it means to be 
Smalltalk. Smalltalk inspires vision and inspires people to do things 
which change the present and the future. Lets build on that heritage and 
take it forward. What does a modern Smalltalk snapshot 2014 mean. Lets 
educate and communicate. Others (non-Smalltalkers) don't get to define 
what Smalltalk is. We do.


Let us learn from them what they think Smalltalk is. Where they are 
wrong, educate them. Where they are right and we have an issue. Let's 
learn a lesson and improve our Smalltalk.


Computer science/art is young. This is a journey. Lets make it a good one.

Jimmie



On 04/30/2014 11:12 AM, p...@highoctane.be wrote:

Pharo := Smalltalk ++





On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com 
mailto:jlhouc...@gmail.com wrote:


On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it.
It seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar
Object-Oriented structures, it even has blocks. But everything
is so slightly different, from the programming environment, to
the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread Esteban Lorenzano

Again… you are missing the point. 
nobody here doubts Pharo is a Smalltalk. 
nobody outside our small world believes Smalltalk is alive. 

And yes… you can argue all what you want. But you are scratching where it does 
not itch.

We choose not to *market* Pharo as a Smalltalk, because each time someone 
outside our small world hear about Smalltalk believes that is a long time dead 
language. No matter how much effort you put into explain that is not true, 
people will not believe it. And people is always more willing to try something 
new than something old (except in the case of wines and fine alcohols, of 
course). 
So… we prefer to track people to our community and let them notice wat WE ALL 
KNOW: Smalltalk is not dead, and Pharo is a proof of that. 

Esteban

On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:07, Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com wrote:

 In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80.
 
 But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014.
 Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 1976. ...
 
 And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is not KR, or 
 C89, C90 or C99?
 Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with Python 2.x 
 which is dominant?
 
 Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this era to do 
 things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity in the image. We 
 need the image to be clean. We need to learn the lessons we as Smalltalker's 
 have learned in the last 24 years and apply them to Pharo Smalltalk. And I 
 believe that is much of what Pharo is attempting to do.
 
 Noel in his talk said that Smalltalk doesn't play well with others. And with 
 Pharo it still isn't as easy as in other languages like Python, Ruby, Lua, 
 etc. But with NativeBoost we have a tool which enables us to do much. And 
 NativeBoost isn't finished. I believe when NativeBoost is fully mature and 
 the vm/image has sufficiently changed to enable us. We will have one of the 
 best plays with others well stories.
 
 I know in the app I am writing, NativeBoost's current condition struggled 
 with my library. It often crashed. This library has to deal with a C Thread. 
 Which is why I am spending my current time studying C.
 
 Whether or not the Smalltalk Inspired crowd likes it, the moment some else 
 declares that Pharo is a Smalltalk the Smalltalk Inspired marketing is 
 tanked. The cat is out of the bag. 
 
 The Reddit thread demonstrates this. People went to the new website. They 
 read the current marketing and were confused. What is this Pharo thing. And 
 in the thread it comes out that Pharo is a Smalltalk. Lets make that clear up 
 front. Then lets define what it means to be Pharo Smalltalk.
 
 Here is an unfortunate quote from that thread.
 
 
 emaringolo 1 point an hour ago
 Pharo is aimed to do serious/business development, and it's been reshaping 
 itself since its conception (several years ago when it forked from Squeak).
 It doesn't want to have any backward or historic compatibility with other 
 Smalltalks.
 You can see its changelogs and the roadmap for future versions to see how it 
 is different, and how it will be different.
 
 
 This makes it sound like Pharo wants remove compatibility simply for the sake 
 of not being a Smalltalk. As opposed to what I believe Esteban meant. And yes 
 I understand that English is not his native language, and there are many for 
 whom it is, who still use it poorly. What I believe he meant, is that Pharo 
 will not be constrained by backward compatibility. If a change or feature 
 that is of value to Pharo Smalltalk. That feature will be done even if it 
 means breaking backward compatibility with other Smalltalk 80 based 
 Smalltalks. We are moving forward. But this does not invalidate Pharo being a 
 Smalltalk. As has been stated before, breaking changes happened in Smalltalk 
 76 and 80.
 
 Smalltalk has a wonderful heritage. It is not without its issues. However the 
 good of Smalltalk is enormous. Take a look at this chart
 http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/
 Smalltalk is a big influence in the history of programming. This is something 
 worth being a part of. Be proud of it.
 
 Pharo needs to define what one vision of a modern Smalltalk is. Let us 
 educate people of what our vision for Pharo Smalltalk is. And guess what 
 folks its 2014. Before long it wont be. And before long the vision of Pharo 
 2014 will no longer be any more modern than Smalltalk 80. But neither 
 Smalltalk 80 nor Pharo 3.0 constrain what it means to be Smalltalk. Smalltalk 
 inspires vision and inspires people to do things which change the present and 
 the future. Lets build on that heritage and take it forward. What does a 
 modern Smalltalk snapshot 2014 mean. Lets educate and communicate. Others 
 (non-Smalltalkers) don't get to define what Smalltalk is. We do.
 
 Let us learn from them what they think Smalltalk is. Where they are

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


On 04/28/2014 11:12 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

… more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

MountainWest RubyConf 2014

Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like it 
should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, it 
even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the programming 
environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using Smalltalk will 
make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show you how to get 
started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live coding may be 
involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.


http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk


One more thought about Pharo being a Smalltalk.

The Pharo Wikipedia page from day one to today has declared Pharo as a 
Smalltalk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharo


A quote from the first entry.

Pharo is a fork of Squeak, an implementation of the object-oriented, 
dynamically typed, reflective programming language Smalltalk.



A quote from the current entry.

Pharo is an open-source Smalltalk-environment released under the MIT 
license since 2009.

...
Pharo is a fork of Squeak, an open source Smalltalk environment created 
by the Smalltalk-80 team (Dan Ingalls and Alan Kay). The Pharo team want 
to develop a modern Smalltalk for companies and software engineering 
research.



Smalltalk is mentioned over 20 times. Pharo is listed as being written 
in Smalltalk. Not being written in Pharo.


Also, Smalltalk is the original pure object-oriented language.
If Pharo ditches Smalltalk, are we ditching OO also.

The only and sole reason for not proudly proclaiming Pharo as Smalltalk 
is marketing. That type of marketing cuts both ways. We also lose the 
positive of Smalltalk.


We can't undo our history. We are a Smalltalk. We can invent our future. 
Just as a true Smalltalk should.


Smalltalk has baggage. So does Object-Oriented programming. But just 
because the functional people, the Clojure people flog OO, doesn't mean 
we abandon that terminology. We embrace OO and we educated people that 
C++ and Java do not get to be arbiters of defining what OO means. We 
show them what OO really means.


And so we do not let the Smalltalk detractors define us either.

I think our new website should proudly reflect that Pharo is a 
Smalltalk. The Wikipedia page does, and rightly so.


I have been a part of the Squeak/Pharo community since the 2000. I still 
have much to learn. But this much I know. I am happy to be a 
Smalltalker. I have wandered around much, and I always wander back, 
because nothing else brings the experience and productivity. Not Python, 
Ruby, Lua, ...


Long live Smalltalk.

Jimmie

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread Esteban A. Maringolo

2014-04-30 15:07 GMT-03:00 Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com:
 Here is an unfortunate quote from that thread.

 
 emaringolo 1 point an hour ago
 Pharo is aimed to do serious/business development, and it's been reshaping
 itself since its conception (several years ago when it forked from Squeak).
 It doesn't want to have any backward or historic compatibility with other
 Smalltalks.
 You can see its changelogs and the roadmap for future versions to see how it
 is different, and how it will be different.
 

 This makes it sound like Pharo wants remove compatibility simply for the
 sake of not being a Smalltalk. As opposed to what I believe Esteban meant.
 And yes I understand that English is not his native language, and there are
 many for whom it is, who still use it poorly.

That's certainly an interpretation.

I didn't mean it wants to REMOVE compatibility, but I did mean it
doesn't wan't backward compatibility with Smalltalk per se. Sometimes
it isn't compatible with previous versions of itself!

I remember having read exactly that: we don't want backward compatibility.

 What I believe he meant, is that Pharo will not be constrained by backward 
 compatibility.
 If a change or feature that is of value to Pharo Smalltalk. That feature will 
 be done even
 if it means breaking backward compatibility with other Smalltalk 80 based
 Smalltalks.

This is exactly what I meant.

 We are moving forward. But this does not invalidate Pharo being
 a Smalltalk. As has been stated before, breaking changes happened in
 Smalltalk 76 and 80.

As a disclaimer I'm a strong defender of not hiding the Smalltalk
heritage in Pharo.
However there is no need to name something Pharo Smalltalk to have a
connection with its past, but also no need to avoid any mention of the
word Smalltalk in the new home page. At least from the SEO point of
view. :)

Regards,


Esteban A. Maringolo

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

But that is the point. This kind of marketing is false. It denies who we 
are.


As soon as they look at Pharo. Learn to use and then learn that Pharo is 
a Smalltalk and that we are liars.


Did keeping silent about Pharo help in the Reddit thread. No.
Did the current marketing explain well what Pharo is. No.
Read the thread. People were confused.
And regardless of the marketing attempt, the fact of Pharo being a 
Smalltalk did not remain suppressed. So therefore, those who were closed 
minded against Smalltalk have then been alerted, and they can close 
their minds. Attempting to not make it plain was an abject failure.


People who understand the value of Smalltalk and of a modern open source 
implementation will come.



I guess none of the commercial Smalltalks are alive? Nobody knows of 
them. They are going broke?


Gemstone, VisualWorks, ...

What is this new thing that people are using?

Clojure based on Lisp. Not new.
Python 23 years old.
Lua 21
Ruby 19

Clojure based on Lisp but adding modern functional features disproves 
any thought that an old language with lots of baggage can't attract new 
users.

From the Clojure home page. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp
They embrace their heritage and are better for it. They also detail 
their value proposition and being a Lisp is part of it.



I am all agreeable to attracting people to our community. But falseness 
isn't the way.


Not everybody is closed minded and ignorant. Those that are we can wait 
until they are not.


But Pharo has to offer people the proper value proposition. When it 
does, I believe it will attract sincere people. When the value of Pharo 
meets the needs of the people, it will attact the appropriate people. 
But until then, we can market it however we want and they will not care. 
Right now Pharo is working hard to reach that point that it can offer 
them something they will value. For some it already does. For others not 
yet. That not yet, it a bigger obstacle than Pharo being marketed as a 
Smalltalk and telling the truth.


We need to embrace being a Smalltalk and sell our value proposition in 
terms that mean something to somebody who doesn't already get Smalltalk. 
We failed at that. Too vague, too ambiguous. It confused some of the 
Reddit people. People to whom we are supposedly intending to attract and 
market to.


Jimmie


On 04/30/2014 01:22 PM, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:

Again… you are missing the point.
nobody here doubts Pharo is a Smalltalk.
nobody outside our small world believes Smalltalk is alive.

And yes… you can argue all what you want. But you are scratching where 
it does not itch.


We choose not to *market* Pharo as a Smalltalk, because each time 
someone outside our small world hear about Smalltalk believes that is 
a long time dead language. No matter how much effort you put into 
explain that is not true, people will not believe it. And people is 
always more willing to try something new than something old (except in 
the case of wines and fine alcohols, of course).
So… we prefer to track people to our community and let them notice wat 
WE ALL KNOW: Smalltalk is not dead, and Pharo is a proof of that.


Esteban

On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:07, Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com 
mailto:jlhouc...@gmail.com wrote:



In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80.

But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014.
Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 
1976. ...


And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is not 
KR, or C89, C90 or C99?
Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with 
Python 2.x which is dominant?


Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this 
era to do things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity 
in the image. We need the image to be clean. We need to learn the 
lessons we as Smalltalker's have learned in the last 24 years and 
apply them to Pharo Smalltalk. And I believe that is much of what 
Pharo is attempting to do.


Noel in his talk said that Smalltalk doesn't play well with others. 
And with Pharo it still isn't as easy as in other languages like 
Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. But with NativeBoost we have a tool which 
enables us to do much. And NativeBoost isn't finished. I believe when 
NativeBoost is fully mature and the vm/image has sufficiently changed 
to enable us. We will have one of the best plays with others well 
stories.


I know in the app I am writing, NativeBoost's current condition 
struggled with my library. It often crashed. This library has to deal 
with a C Thread. Which is why I am spending my current time studying C.


Whether or not the Smalltalk Inspired crowd likes it, the moment some 
else declares that Pharo is a Smalltalk the Smalltalk Inspired 
marketing is tanked. The cat is out of the bag.


The Reddit thread demonstrates this. People went to the new website. 
They read the current marketing and were confused. What is this Pharo 
thing.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread Esteban Lorenzano

Some days a I really would love not to love smalltalk...

 On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:52, Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 But that is the point. This kind of marketing is false. It denies who we are.
 
 As soon as they look at Pharo. Learn to use and then learn that Pharo is a 
 Smalltalk and that we are liars.
 
 Did keeping silent about Pharo help in the Reddit thread. No.
 Did the current marketing explain well what Pharo is. No.
 Read the thread. People were confused.
 And regardless of the marketing attempt, the fact of Pharo being a Smalltalk 
 did not remain suppressed. So therefore, those who were closed minded against 
 Smalltalk have then been alerted, and they can close their minds. Attempting 
 to not make it plain was an abject failure.
 
 People who understand the value of Smalltalk and of a modern open source 
 implementation will come.
 
 
 I guess none of the commercial Smalltalks are alive? Nobody knows   of 
 them. They are going broke?
 
 Gemstone, VisualWorks, ...
 
 What is this new thing that people are using?
 
 Clojure based on Lisp. Not new.
 Python 23 years old.
 Lua 21
 Ruby 19
 
 Clojure based on Lisp but adding modern functional features disproves any 
 thought that an old language with lots of baggage can't attract new users.
 From the Clojure home page. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp
 They embrace their heritage and are better for it. They also detail their 
 value proposition and being a Lisp is part of it.
 
 
 I am all agreeable to attracting people to our community. But falseness isn't 
 the way.
 
 Not everybody is closed minded and ignorant. Those that are we can   wait 
 until they are not.
 
 But Pharo has to offer people the proper value proposition. When it does, I 
 believe it will attract sincere people. When the value of Pharo meets the 
 needs of the people, it will attact the appropriate people. But until then, 
 we can market it however we want and they will not care. Right now Pharo is 
 working hard to reach that point that it can offer them something they will 
 value. For some it already does. For others not yet. That not yet, it a 
 bigger obstacle than Pharo being marketed as a Smalltalk and telling the 
 truth.
 
 We need to embrace being a Smalltalk and sell our value proposition in terms 
 that mean something to somebody who doesn't already get Smalltalk. We failed 
 at that. Too vague, too ambiguous. It confused some of the Reddit people. 
 People to whom we are supposedly intending to attract and market to.
 
 Jimmie
 
 
 On 04/30/2014 01:22 PM, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:
 Again… you are missing the point.
 nobody here doubts Pharo is a Smalltalk. 
 nobody outside our small world believes Smalltalk is alive. 
 
 And yes… you can argue all what you want. But you are scratching where it 
 does not itch.
 
 We choose not to *market* Pharo as a Smalltalk, because each time someone 
 outside our small world hear about Smalltalk believes that is a long time 
 dead language. No matter how much effort you put into explain that is not 
 true, people will not believe it. And people is always more willing to try 
 something new than something old (except in the case of wines and fine 
 alcohols, of course). 
 So… we prefer to track people to our community and let them notice wat WE 
 ALL KNOW: Smalltalk is not dead, and Pharo is a proof of that. 
 
 Esteban
 
 On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:07, Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80.
 
 But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014.
 Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 1976. ...
 
 And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is not KR, 
 or C89, C90 or C99?
 Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with Python 2.x 
 which is dominant?
 
 Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this era to 
 do things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity in the image. 
 We need the image to be clean. We need to learn the lessons we as 
 Smalltalker's have learned in the last 24 years and apply them to Pharo 
 Smalltalk. And I believe that is much of what Pharo is attempting to do.
 
 Noel in his talk said that Smalltalk doesn't play well with others. And 
 with Pharo it still isn't as easy as in other languages like Python, Ruby, 
 Lua, etc. But with NativeBoost we have a tool which enables us to do much. 
 And NativeBoost isn't finished. I believe when NativeBoost is fully mature 
 and the vm/image has sufficiently changed to enable us. We will have one of 
 the best plays with others well stories.
 
 I know in the app I am writing, NativeBoost's current condition struggled 
 with my library. It often crashed. This library has to deal with a C 
 Thread. Which is why I am spending my current time studying C.
 
 Whether or not the Smalltalk Inspired crowd likes it, the moment some else 
 declares that Pharo is a Smalltalk the Smalltalk

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread Sebastian Sastre


On Apr 30, 2014, at 3:22 PM, Esteban Lorenzano esteba...@gmail.com wrote:

 We choose not to *market* Pharo as a Smalltalk, because each time someone 
 outside our small world hear about Smalltalk believes that is a long time 
 dead language


Then it’s a failed decision as Reddit reactions proves.

What’s better?

We have past issues we prefer not talk about, and our desire to not talk about 
is so bad that we did a site with that in mind because we are willing to 
pretend we’re something else so you dear jerk (that aren’t willing to use/try 
smalltalk anyway) might stop bullying us by telling us we’re dead. Oh wait! it 
works! a bully has a conversion click! Okay, download, click image. Open, oops 
Smalltalk everywhere. Now you’re dead and your marketing tried to fool jerks. 
What are you now famous for?

Versus

Confronting a jerk that says you’re dead” every time by telling them Dead? 
hey.. see that product/startup over there? yah.. Smalltalk. And proudly 
preserve the integrity of Smalltalk’s design principles as always and more?

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread vfclists .

On 30 April 2014 19:33, Esteban A. Maringolo emaring...@gmail.com wrote:

 2014-04-30 15:07 GMT-03:00 Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com:
  Here is an unfortunate quote from that thread.
 
  
  emaringolo 1 point an hour ago
  Pharo is aimed to do serious/business development, and it's been
 reshaping
  itself since its conception (several years ago when it forked from
 Squeak).
  It doesn't want to have any backward or historic compatibility with
 other
  Smalltalks.
  You can see its changelogs and the roadmap for future versions to see
 how it
  is different, and how it will be different.
  
 
  This makes it sound like Pharo wants remove compatibility simply for the
  sake of not being a Smalltalk. As opposed to what I believe Esteban
 meant.
  And yes I understand that English is not his native language, and there
 are
  many for whom it is, who still use it poorly.

 That's certainly an interpretation.

 I didn't mean it wants to REMOVE compatibility, but I did mean it
 doesn't wan't backward compatibility with Smalltalk per se. Sometimes
 it isn't compatible with previous versions of itself!

 I remember having read exactly that: we don't want backward
 compatibility.

  What I believe he meant, is that Pharo will not be constrained by
 backward compatibility.
  If a change or feature that is of value to Pharo Smalltalk. That feature
 will be done even
  if it means breaking backward compatibility with other Smalltalk 80 based
  Smalltalks.

 This is exactly what I meant.

  We are moving forward. But this does not invalidate Pharo being
  a Smalltalk. As has been stated before, breaking changes happened in
  Smalltalk 76 and 80.

 As a disclaimer I'm a strong defender of not hiding the Smalltalk
 heritage in Pharo.
 However there is no need to name something Pharo Smalltalk to have a
 connection with its past, but also no need to avoid any mention of the
 word Smalltalk in the new home page. At least from the SEO point of
 view. :)

 Regards,


 Esteban A. Maringolo



The problem here is that if you downplay the Smalltalk foundations of Pharo
then you only reinforce the impression that Smalltalk is outdated when it
is revealed that Pharo is a Smalltalk. What matters more is whether Pharo
is a Smalltalk done right, or Smalltalk for the New web 3.0 era, where
none of the popular languages offer a live coding environment.

An open source Smalltalk should really target Python in the areas where
Python is used as a scripting front end to systems written in higher
performance languages, ie stuff like Blender, Unity, Gephi etc. Power users
who need live interactive environments should be the main target of a tool
like Pharo. That also fits with early Smalltalk designers principles which
were focused on helping end users model their stuff, children to a large
extent.

For software developers something like Smalltalk/X would probably be a
better bet if the licensing could draw more developers to it, or one of the
other Java based Smalltalk if they were finished. They need better
interoperability and the ability to drop down to C or some other low level
language when they need it. Software developers are not thinking about what
they can do with it now, they are thinking of what they will not be able to
do with it 18 months down the line.


-- 
Frank Church

===
http://devblog.brahmancreations.com

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread kilon alios

We should not forget the Java is dead craze over a decade ago. It was the
time where dynamic language like python and ruby were gaining a lot of
traction but here we are a decade later and Java is alive and kicking.

I seriously doubt that there are a lot of people out there that take
Smalltalk dead seriously when the internet is littered with C is Dead ,
Javascript is Dead , Lisp is Dead etc etc

Its just a meaningless word that people love to use in a desperate attempt
to get more hits and appear in Google results. Its more like a joke.

I completely agree with you that Smalltalk inspired is reinforcing Sorry
for dead Smalltalk , we will try to follow its legacy, RIP Smalltalk , at
least this is how I see it. I may be wrong.

The question I want to raise is how many coders out there are even aware
what Smalltalk really is ? I was not aware of Smalltalk 2 years ago. Thats
the sad truth.

Another mistake is that people tend to over idealising Smalltalk and it
appears as if Smalltalk used to be popular, but I have found no evidence
that Smalltalk was ever popular. Again I may be wrong but this is also
maybe a motivation to regard Smalltalk dead.


On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 10:38 PM, vfclists . vfcli...@gmail.com wrote:




 On 30 April 2014 19:33, Esteban A. Maringolo emaring...@gmail.com wrote:

 2014-04-30 15:07 GMT-03:00 Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com:
  Here is an unfortunate quote from that thread.
 
  
  emaringolo 1 point an hour ago
  Pharo is aimed to do serious/business development, and it's been
 reshaping
  itself since its conception (several years ago when it forked from
 Squeak).
  It doesn't want to have any backward or historic compatibility with
 other
  Smalltalks.
  You can see its changelogs and the roadmap for future versions to see
 how it
  is different, and how it will be different.
  
 
  This makes it sound like Pharo wants remove compatibility simply for the
  sake of not being a Smalltalk. As opposed to what I believe Esteban
 meant.
  And yes I understand that English is not his native language, and there
 are
  many for whom it is, who still use it poorly.

 That's certainly an interpretation.

 I didn't mean it wants to REMOVE compatibility, but I did mean it
 doesn't wan't backward compatibility with Smalltalk per se. Sometimes
 it isn't compatible with previous versions of itself!

 I remember having read exactly that: we don't want backward
 compatibility.

  What I believe he meant, is that Pharo will not be constrained by
 backward compatibility.
  If a change or feature that is of value to Pharo Smalltalk. That
 feature will be done even
  if it means breaking backward compatibility with other Smalltalk 80
 based
  Smalltalks.

 This is exactly what I meant.

  We are moving forward. But this does not invalidate Pharo being
  a Smalltalk. As has been stated before, breaking changes happened in
  Smalltalk 76 and 80.

 As a disclaimer I'm a strong defender of not hiding the Smalltalk
 heritage in Pharo.
 However there is no need to name something Pharo Smalltalk to have a
 connection with its past, but also no need to avoid any mention of the
 word Smalltalk in the new home page. At least from the SEO point of
 view. :)

 Regards,


 Esteban A. Maringolo



 The problem here is that if you downplay the Smalltalk foundations of
 Pharo then you only reinforce the impression that Smalltalk is outdated
 when it is revealed that Pharo is a Smalltalk. What matters more is whether
 Pharo is a Smalltalk done right, or Smalltalk for the New web 3.0 era,
 where none of the popular languages offer a live coding environment.

 An open source Smalltalk should really target Python in the areas where
 Python is used as a scripting front end to systems written in higher
 performance languages, ie stuff like Blender, Unity, Gephi etc. Power users
 who need live interactive environments should be the main target of a tool
 like Pharo. That also fits with early Smalltalk designers principles which
 were focused on helping end users model their stuff, children to a large
 extent.

 For software developers something like Smalltalk/X would probably be a
 better bet if the licensing could draw more developers to it, or one of the
 other Java based Smalltalk if they were finished. They need better
 interoperability and the ability to drop down to C or some other low level
 language when they need it. Software developers are not thinking about what
 they can do with it now, they are thinking of what they will not be able to
 do with it 18 months down the line.


 --
 Frank Church

 ===
 http://devblog.brahmancreations.com

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread Sean P. DeNigris

sebast...@flowingconcept.com wrote
 Then it’s a failed decision as Reddit reactions proves.

I think that's a bit premature. The reaction on Reddit was because there was
no mention on the Pharo site/release-notice of Smalltalk *anywhere*. There
was no path to take people from the sound bite to the full picture (I'm
writing some thoughts on that right now and will start a separate thread). 

You don't wave the white flag after losing one battle! And certainly not
when the evidence of losing even that battle is a few commenters on Reddit!
We learned an important lesson - if we're not going to provide people with a
neat little pink plane Smalltalk box to put Pharo in, then we better have
some good answers as to what it /really/ is when they start investigating.
Each one of those criticisms is an opportunity. The useful question is -
what supporting explanation on the website would have taken their initial
curiosity, possibly enabled by not being turned off by a misunderstanding of
the word Smalltalk, and guided them down the path of understanding the
fuller picture that - it is an environment, and a library, and a dialect of
the Smalltalk language.



-
Cheers,
Sean
--
View this message in context: 
http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4757341.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


I understand. My apologies for contributing to one of those days.
For me that day was while I was reading this thread and watching Doru 
and Sean arguing with Eliot. It almost made me want to go back to 
Squeak. Not that I am saying there is anything wrong with Squeak.


They were firmly arguing that Pharo is NOT Smalltalk. They contend that 
making changes that make it different than Smalltalk-80 make it not 
Smalltalk.


http://www.tudorgirba.com/blog/pharo-is-pharo

Their contentions were not refuted. I wanted to put forth my 
understanding and opinion that Pharo is a Smalltalk.


And then you reply stating of course everybody here knows Pharo is 
Smalltalk. But that is exactly what Doru is arguing against.


If Pharo is going to distance itself from Smalltalk and be consistent 
about it, then every Pharo reference to Smalltalk in the image or 
website or wikipedia unless historical should be changed.


This inconsistency makes Pharo look bad.

Jimmie

On 04/30/2014 01:58 PM, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:

Some days a I really would love not to love smalltalk...

On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:52, Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com 
mailto:jlhouc...@gmail.com wrote:


But that is the point. This kind of marketing is false. It denies who 
we are.


As soon as they look at Pharo. Learn to use and then learn that Pharo 
is a Smalltalk and that we are liars.


Did keeping silent about Pharo help in the Reddit thread. No.
Did the current marketing explain well what Pharo is. No.
Read the thread. People were confused.
And regardless of the marketing attempt, the fact of Pharo being a 
Smalltalk did not remain suppressed. So therefore, those who were 
closed minded against Smalltalk have then been alerted, and they can 
close their minds. Attempting to not make it plain was an abject failure.


People who understand the value of Smalltalk and of a modern open 
source implementation will come.



I guess none of the commercial Smalltalks are alive? Nobody knows of 
them. They are going broke?


Gemstone, VisualWorks, ...

What is this new thing that people are using?

Clojure based on Lisp. Not new.
Python 23 years old.
Lua 21
Ruby 19

Clojure based on Lisp but adding modern functional features disproves 
any thought that an old language with lots of baggage can't attract 
new users.

From the Clojure home page. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp
They embrace their heritage and are better for it. They also detail 
their value proposition and being a Lisp is part of it.



I am all agreeable to attracting people to our community. But 
falseness isn't the way.


Not everybody is closed minded and ignorant. Those that are we can 
wait until they are not.


But Pharo has to offer people the proper value proposition. When it 
does, I believe it will attract sincere people. When the value of 
Pharo meets the needs of the people, it will attact the appropriate 
people. But until then, we can market it however we want and they 
will not care. Right now Pharo is working hard to reach that point 
that it can offer them something they will value. For some it already 
does. For others not yet. That not yet, it a bigger obstacle than 
Pharo being marketed as a Smalltalk and telling the truth.


We need to embrace being a Smalltalk and sell our value proposition 
in terms that mean something to somebody who doesn't already get 
Smalltalk. We failed at that. Too vague, too ambiguous. It confused 
some of the Reddit people. People to whom we are supposedly intending 
to attract and market to.


Jimmie


On 04/30/2014 01:22 PM, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:

Again… you are missing the point.
nobody here doubts Pharo is a Smalltalk.
nobody outside our small world believes Smalltalk is alive.

And yes… you can argue all what you want. But you are scratching 
where it does not itch.


We choose not to *market* Pharo as a Smalltalk, because each time 
someone outside our small world hear about Smalltalk believes that 
is a long time dead language. No matter how much effort you put into 
explain that is not true, people will not believe it. And people is 
always more willing to try something new than something old (except 
in the case of wines and fine alcohols, of course).
So… we prefer to track people to our community and let them notice 
wat WE ALL KNOW: Smalltalk is not dead, and Pharo is a proof of that.


Esteban

On 30 Apr 2014, at 20:07, Jimmie Houchin jlhouc...@gmail.com 
mailto:jlhouc...@gmail.com wrote:



In the Smalltalk heritage. Pharo comes from Smalltalk 80.

But we don't want to be stuck in 1980. We want Smalltalk 2014.
Smalltalk 80 was modern for 1980. They didn't want to be stuck in 
1976. ...


And Smalltalk isn't unique to this. Is C11 not a C because it is 
not KR, or C89, C90 or C99?
Is Python 3.x not Python because it is not fully compatible with 
Python 2.x which is dominant?


Pharo wants to be a modern Smalltalk able to empower people in this 
era to do things that we do in 2014. We need appropriate modularity 
in the image. We

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-30 Thread Sean P. DeNigris

I was reading this thread and watching... Sean arguing... that Pharo is NOT
Smalltalk

No As I and Esteban (at least, maybe others) have repeated, *we are
NOT saying that Pharo is not Smalltalk*.

Either we're not explaining ourselves well or (more likely IMHO) everyone is
so emotional over this (and it's a good thing that we care that much) that
they're not actually reading what we're saying.

How can you read either
http://forum.world.st/Pharo-is-Smalltalk-and-Not-td4757342.html or my two
main points at
http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756995.html
and say that I'm saying that?!

I think there is a middle ground where everyone gets what they want. I've
tried to express it in the first link above. Please - I love differences and
discussion, but if you're going to react, react /specifically/ to what I
said (e.g. the two points I made in the second link), because right now, you
are only arguing with yourself ;)



-
Cheers,
Sean
--
View this message in context: 
http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4757346.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


Let me reply to this as it is my quote you are quoting.

On 04/30/2014 03:34 PM, Sean P. DeNigris wrote:

I was reading this thread and watching... Sean arguing... that Pharo is NOT
Smalltalk

No As I and Esteban (at least, maybe others) have repeated, *we are
NOT saying that Pharo is not Smalltalk*.


I said that because you joined in with Doru who was stating firmly that 
Pharo is not Smalltalk and gave a link to his post.

http://www.tudorgirba.com/blog/pharo-is-pharo

Where he explicitly states,
 Pharo is not Smalltalk. Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired. 

Which makes Pharo is Smalltalk and Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired as 
opposing each other.

Doru is explicit and insistent on this point.
So by association, you engaged after his message in the Pharo is 
Smalltalk Inspired argument.


That is how I arrived at associating you with the claim that Pharo is 
not Smalltalk.

Right or wrong that is how I included you in that aspect of the discussion.


Either we're not explaining ourselves well or (more likely IMHO) everyone is
so emotional over this (and it's a good thing that we care that much) that
they're not actually reading what we're saying.

How can you read either
http://forum.world.st/Pharo-is-Smalltalk-and-Not-td4757342.html or my two
main points at
http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756995.html
and say that I'm saying that?!

I think there is a middle ground where everyone gets what they want. I've
tried to express it in the first link above. Please - I love differences and
discussion, but if you're going to react, react /specifically/ to what I
said (e.g. the two points I made in the second link), because right now, you
are only arguing with yourself ;)


Now in your above discussion.

You state that Smalltalk = Smalltalk-80 to 99.9% of the developers out 
there.


I don't agree. I would be brazen enough to state that a very high 
percent of developers out there know almost nothing about Smalltalk. I 
would wager a high percent weren't even born when Smalltalk-80 came out. 
You might be one for all I know. I would also wager that most developers 
don't know there is a Smalltalk-80. I imagine that there is more 
ignorance than knowledge about Smalltalk.


Those who have heard of Smalltalk have probably heard of Smalltalk from 
someone who doesn't use Smalltalk for whatever reason. And there are 
many reasons, and many are valid. So what they hear is reasons not to 
use Smalltalk or why people in their community who have a cursory 
Smalltalk experience state as their reasons for not using Smalltalk.


I just don't happen to believe that we should allow people who don't use 
Smalltalk to define it. They can express their opinion, and we should 
listen. That which is valid learn, that which is not nicely engage in 
education and communication. They may still choose not to use Pharo or 
Smalltalk, but hopefully they won't engage in disinformation.


In Pharo's four years since 1.0 Pharo has changed much. So Pharo has to 
deal with its own baggage. There are many who used Pharo 1 or 2. They 
encountered whatever challenges inherent in those versions and left 
disappointed. We will have to rebuild Pharo's image to those people. We 
will have to answer for Pharo's history. Unless we are to say, we are 
targeting our marketing to only those people who have never used any 
dialect of Smalltalk. But this Smalltalk-Inspired vs. Smalltalk is a 
very leaky marketing plan. As soon as anybody not in on the game 
declares, Pharo is a Smalltalk, the game is over. We then have to have 
an answer for why we are a modern Smalltalk and how we answer our past 
failures.


However, there are many who have a modest understanding of Smalltalk.

For example, why does Noel Rappin teach that You Should Learn Smalltalk, 
but does not teach that You Should Use Smalltalk? What are his reasons 
for not using Pharo?


For the people who get Smalltalk, Pharo, why do they not use it? Those 
are answers we need so that we can make valuable decisions on providing 
a story that is attractive to both those who have used Pharo/Smalltalk 
and those who have not.


We need to increase the value proposition so that we can increase people 
who say, In order to provide bread, I program in X, but in my spare 
time projects I use Pharo. As that group increases I believe we will 
see an increase in business use of Pharo. And people will then be able 
to make a living programming in Pharo.


Plays well with others is still a big issue. It is the one I struggle 
with. Interfacing a C library and its issues. I love Pharo/Smalltalk and 
I struggle sometimes with whether or not I will get to use it. Because 
my C is lacking. I wrote the NativeBoost wrapper around the library. But 
it crashes. But the intersection of those who have knowledge in this 
area is small. And those who have time to deal with other peoples issues 
is even fewer. So I am spending my time studying C hoping that at some 
point the

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Esteban Lorenzano


On 29 Apr 2014, at 02:24, Sean P. DeNigris s...@clipperadams.com wrote:

 Tudor Girba-2 wrote
 There is a point of view from which one could say that
 Pharo is Smalltalk by seeing Smalltalk as a movement, rather than specific
 implementation. Unfortunately, everyone else thinks of Smalltalk as a
 specific language, or set of languages with specific environments that
 typically look old enough to not be relevant anymore.
 
 Yes! This is a tower of babel argument.
 For almost every programmer alive, Smaltalk = Smalltalk 80 - Pharo is
 Smalltalk-inspired
 For us, Smaltalk = experimental Dynabook software that bootstraps itself
 (ideally every 4 years) - Pharo is Smalltalk 109.
 
 So it's a question of who you're marketing to. Since we're marketing to
 non-Smalltalkers (quite wise since 16% market penetration is the tipping
 point [1], and we're not there yet), clearly Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired
 is the thing to say. It's not any more or less true than the latter, just
 more useful in its context.
 
 [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

+100

is not about “what is or what is not pharo”, is about how we spread it. 
all of us know that pharo is a smalltalk, but “us” is the 600 people of this 
list. 
there is a world outside. And I even would say: a brave world (yet not so new). 

So the question is how we reach them (or at least more of them). 
You are losing time arguing something that does not have any sense because is 
clear (for us) what pharo is. 
That’s not the discussion. 
Not at all. 

This is a true story:

(eve-online chat, the more nerd of the games around, aprox. 25% of their 
players are programmers or systems-related)

XSo, what do you do?
meI’m a programmer
Xyes, me too… but what do you do?
mePharo, a kind of Smalltalk
XWhat?
mea Smalltalk
XIs not that an old long time dead language? how is possible to work on it?
me [LONG EXPLANATION]
XI never knew anyone who programs in that. I do games, so I program in C++…
mebut you know that *this* game is made in Python, isn’t?
Xyes, but Python is modern, even if not as powerful as C++
meplop 

And like that, it happened several times. 
So… until someone demonstrate that the majority of the programming community in 
the world does not have a pre-concept around Smalltalk, I sustain that we need 
to present our supergreat environment in better ways that just step there 
saying “look the magnificent smalltalk”!
Btw… Gilad did same thing with newspeak: He said “is in the tradition of” with 
is just another way of saying “is smalltalk/self-inspired”. And another btw: I 
do agree with Gilad: Newspeak is not Smalltalk (same as Self is not)… They 
share a tradition, but if we can say that Newspeak and Self are “Smalltalks” we 
need to say that Java and C# are “C plus pluses”.

cheers, 
Esteban 

 
 
 
 -
 Cheers,
 Sean
 --
 View this message in context: 
 http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756891.html
 Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Frank Shearar

On 29 April 2014 03:48, Sean P. DeNigris s...@clipperadams.com wrote:
Esteban A. Maringolo wrote
Plays well with choose your favorite text editor (Sublime, Vim,
etc.) and IDEs (RubyMine, etc.), with source control systems (any file
based system), with unix in general (several cli commands), has
binding for any major/mainstream library* (databases, network, etc.).

But again these boil down to community size/interest
- To use your favorite text editor, Craig Latta serves Smalltalk via
WebDav [1], but who has jumped at this opportunity?
- source control - now that there is community interest, progress on git
support has been moving ahead rapidly with minimal resources
- unix in general - with FFI and OSProcess, what can't you do? Are we
talking about the lack of cool Ruby backtick syntax? While definitely cool,
that special-purpose syntax is the kind of cognitive load Smalltalk
overcomes. All those little syntactical twists and turns to remember lead
away from syntax on a T-shirt to manuals with hundreds of pages
- bindings - again, obviously just a question of community size and interest

Backtick syntax is largely bogus anyway. It's a minor string
interpolation trick with a special evaluation strategy. And I entirely
agree that Ruby has (way, WAY) too much syntax.

So the play well with others is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no
bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no
bindings... At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have those
bindings either.

That's largely true, in the sense that someone needs to grab a shovel
to dig that trench.

But if you start out with an external text editor, with an external
version control system, with (only) stdout/stderr/stdin, you end up
building a different system than if you're already in an insular
environment and want/need to learn to play well with others. Ruby
plays well with other - interfaces well with external systems -
precisely because it didn't have that integrated environment. Now
sure, back in 1976 Smalltalk didn't either, but we're here in 2014, 18
years after Squeak budded off Apple Smalltalk: a tightly integrated
environment is what we started from.

frank

[1]
http://thiscontext.com/2011/06/09/my-favorite-text-editor-editing-a-spoon-webdav-filesystem/

-
Cheers,
Sean
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Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread kilon alios

The problem is that sometimes we overestimate how important play well with
others is.

In python we have the cpython vs jython / ironpython . Cpython is the
popular choice which is python implemented in C. Ironpython is a compiler
of python for .NET and jython a compiler for Java.

The advantage of using .NET and especially Java libraries out of the box is
obvious. Yet Jython and Ironpython are hardly popular , definitely less
popular than Pharo.

It seems that coders suffer on what I call code narcissism syndrome , it
goes like this

Jython : well I am python written in Java and I can use any Java library
you want out of the box and even C libraries like Cpython
coder : Wow cool
Cpython : yes but all my libraries are written in python do you really want
to mess with Java libraries ?
coder: hmm, eh, no not really

So my experience is that if you have something you really enjoy even though
it may lack features you would find on a bigger system, you will still
prefer to use that. Because there is a reason why you checked it out in the
first place, you were really unhappy with the big system.

So I am full supporter of the idea that pharo should make git integration,
as well CLI , and other tools easier for those that want to use such
external tools. But we should not worry too much about it.

Afterall people change or try new languages because they are not satisfied
with what they have already in their system. They want a fresh new approach
to things.

I was interested in pharo because python lacks a real python IDE. Most IDEs
that Python uses are IDEs that follow work well with others concept but
that concept sacrifices the advantages of having a closely integrated
system like Pharo has.

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 10:42 AM, Frank Shearar frank.shea...@gmail.comwrote:

But again these boil down to community size/interest
- To use your favorite text editor, Craig Latta serves Smalltalk via
WebDav [1], but who has jumped at this opportunity?
- source control - now that there is community interest, progress on git
support has been moving ahead rapidly with minimal resources
- unix in general - with FFI and OSProcess, what can't you do? Are we
talking about the lack of cool Ruby backtick syntax? While definitely
cool,
that special-purpose syntax is the kind of cognitive load Smalltalk
overcomes. All those little syntactical twists and turns to remember lead
away from syntax on a T-shirt to manuals with hundreds of pages
- bindings - again, obviously just a question of community size and
interest

Backtick syntax is largely bogus anyway. It's a minor string
interpolation trick with a special evaluation strategy. And I entirely
agree that Ruby has (way, WAY) too much syntax.

So the play well with others is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are
no
bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no
bindings... At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have
those
bindings either.

That's largely true, in the sense that someone needs to grab a shovel
to dig that trench.

frank

[1]

http://thiscontext.com/2011/06/09/my-favorite-text-editor-editing-a-spoon-webdav-filesystem/

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Sean P. DeNigris

S Krish wrote
 labelling ( falsely ), that will give no impact / or add any value to the
 perception of people.

This is the crux of it. It perfectly illustrates two misunderstandings:
1. The idea that Smalltalk-inspired is false. This is a classic Blind
men and an elephant problem [1]. As I explained in my OP, Smalltalk is an
overloaded term (ST-80 vs. continually evolving dynabook software), so
Smalltalk is as false to the 99.9% of developers as Smalltalk-inspired
is false to us 0.1%. But neither is false. Each tells a different part of
the same story to a different audience. I'm describing the elephant's tail,
and you're feeling the trunk, arguing that that's not what an elephant is
;)
2. That the exact words aren't that important. If we look at the $87 billion
spent globally on advertising and marketing [2], and the U.S. political
system, we see that money and power disagrees. And, Esteban just gave a real
world example of how calling Pharo Smalltalk has a very real negative
impact.

I've made these arguments a few times as we've discussed this topic. Even
though it doesn't seem that important, I've taken the time because we are a
budding community and it seems extra important to be united.

At the same time, we've gone around and around with this. And previous
responses after I've made what I consider IMHO to be a logical case, have
been something like, yeah but it's a lie. It *is* Smalltalk! which doesn't
speak at all to my two main points. And, I may be wrong!!! And if I am, I
want to know! So will someone who believes we shouldn't call it
Smalltalk-inspired do me the great honor of refuting the above instead of
stating that Smalltalk-inspired is a false statement, which I've addressed
in point #1.

Thanks ;-P

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
[2] http://www.reportlinker.com/ci02379/Advertising-and-Marketing.html



-
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Sean
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Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Esteban A. Maringolo

2014-04-29 4:42 GMT-03:00 Frank Shearar frank.shea...@gmail.com:
 On 29 April 2014 03:48, Sean P. DeNigris s...@clipperadams.com wrote:

 So the play well with others is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no
 bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no
 bindings... At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have those
 bindings either.

 That's largely true, in the sense that someone needs to grab a shovel
 to dig that trench.

 But if you start out with an external text editor, with an external
 version control system, with (only) stdout/stderr/stdin, you end up
 building a different system than if you're already in an insular
 environment and want/need to learn to play well with others.

This is what I meant by built from the ground (cli) up. And sticking
with unix philosophy.

 Ruby plays well with other - interfaces well with external systems -
 precisely because it didn't have that integrated environment.

It NEEDS external tools, because there isn't a Ruby toolkit (as with
any smalltalk distro). The concept of IDE is clearly separated from
the language and vm. Of course it has its drawbacks.


Regards!

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Esteban A. Maringolo

2014-04-28 23:48 GMT-03:00 Sean P. DeNigris s...@clipperadams.com:
 Esteban A. Maringolo wrote
 Plays well with choose your favorite text editor (Sublime, Vim,
 etc.) and IDEs (RubyMine, etc.), with source control systems (any file
 based system), with unix in general (several cli commands), has
 binding for any major/mainstream library* (databases, network, etc.).

 But again these boil down to community size/interest
 - To use your favorite text editor, Craig Latta serves Smalltalk via
 WebDav [1], but who has jumped at this opportunity?
 - source control - now that there is community interest, progress on git
 support has been moving ahead rapidly with minimal resources

This is my point, who uses WebDAV as its file support?
It is a workaround to enable file based development. A VERY CLEVER
one, but still.

 - unix in general - with FFI and OSProcess, what can't you do? Are we
 talking about the lack of cool Ruby backtick syntax? While definitely cool,
 that special-purpose syntax is the kind of cognitive load Smalltalk
 overcomes. All those little syntactical twists and turns to remember lead
 away from syntax on a T-shirt to manuals with hundreds of pages

I'm not talking about syntax, and I wouldn't trade Smalltalk syntax
for anything else.
FFI and OSProcess IS NOT unix interoperability, are ways to get out
of the image (the island in Byte's '81 cover).

Think about this... Windows and Unix/Linux culture.

One started from an all windows architecture, whilst the other was
the other way around.

Windows is still thriving to get a command line culture for many of
its products.
Only in the last years they've been adding more and more features
through command line, because of the demand of scripting and who knows
what else. And maybe that command line need comes from people coming
from the unix world.

And, to me, this is playing well with others, not being able to call
external programs via any mechanism.

I think that one big part of the success of Mac notebooks in the
developer community, is the fact is has an underlying unix.

Oversimplified example: You don't need a version of gzip with bindings
to tar in order to have both working together.

 - bindings - again, obviously just a question of community size and interest

Here I agree. That's why I asked if you would recommend Pharo today to
somebody who has current needs.

 So the play well with others is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no
 bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no
 bindings...

I have to agree with you about the self-fulfilling prophecy.

 At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have those bindings 
 either.

Ruby got to be what it is because of Rails. Because of 37signals.

Pharo doesn't have that. It could have happened with Seaside. But it didn't.

It worries me that when an outsider pinpoints so clearly what are our
weak points we can't think outside of our box.
Proportions aside, it remembers me when you talk with a 100% minded
PHP programmer about something, and they can only think inside of
their box, and instead reply that you can do OO in PHP and you don't
need an interactive debugger.:)

Having all that said, I still bet on Pharo. :)

Regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Sean P. DeNigris

Esteban A. Maringolo wrote
 This is my point, who uses WebDAV as its file support?
 It is a workaround to enable file based development. A VERY CLEVER
 one, but still.

A tool is always a layer of abstraction over the real model. I wouldn't say
it's any more of a workaround than a System Browser is a workaround to
enable source code based development instead of the real underlying bytecode
model ;)

But what I'm seeing in this conversation is a useful marketing path. What if
we collected the most common objections to Smalltalk and worked on making
the solutions easy and well-documented. We have the building blocks, but I
mean packaging and explaining them from an outsiders point of view.

For example, even though we Smalltalkers may not want to edit St code in
emacs/vim (although I do miss the bindings - Igor, help we need that new
text editor ha ha!), it might be a good investment to make sure it can be
done easily in Pharo and prominently display that feature on the website.
FAQ Q: Can I develop in my favorite text editor A: Yes! Choose enable
external editor from the world menu... And maybe not even mention that
developing outside the live, dynamic environment is not a good idea. Maybe
that's the teddy bear they need to hold onto in a scary new world until they
get comfortable and realize the power and advantage of giving that up for
themselves.

Same goes with Unix interop. REPL is easy, but is it documented and
marketed? What would it take to easily pipe output of other programs to
Pharo? Maybe be able to sourceCodeString exportAsUnixCommand:
'/usr/bin/my_cool_command'

We're usually do screencasts of blue plane ideas that people don't even
know they need. A series of pink plane things that people are attached to,
even if they would probably give them up if they grokked Smalltalk, but
presented as serious how-tos, could really help us grow to critical mass.



-
Cheers,
Sean
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Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Ben Coman

Sean P. DeNigris wrote:

Esteban A. Maringolo wrote

This is my point, who uses WebDAV as its file support?
It is a "workaround" to enable file based development. A VERY CLEVER
one, but still.

A tool is always a layer of abstraction over the real model. I wouldn't say
it's any more of a workaround than a System Browser is a workaround to
enable source code based development instead of the real underlying bytecode
model ;)

But what I'm seeing in this conversation is a useful marketing path. What if
we collected the most common objections to Smalltalk and worked on making
the solutions easy and well-documented. We have the building blocks, but I
mean packaging and explaining them from an outsiders point of view.

For example, even though we Smalltalkers may not want to edit St code in
emacs/vim (although I do miss the bindings - Igor, help we need that new
text editor ha ha!), it might be a good investment to make sure it can be
done easily in Pharo and prominently display that feature on the website.
FAQ Q: Can I develop in my favorite text editor A: Yes! Choose "enable
external editor" from the world menu... And maybe not even mention that
developing outside the live, dynamic environment is not a good idea. Maybe
that's the teddy bear they need to hold onto in a scary new world until they
get comfortable and realize the power and advantage of giving that up for
themselves.

Why do some people prefer rock music and others classical music? Its
about the patterns they know. Our brains naturally try to cram each
experience into a pattern it already knows. I remember when I used to
dislike Jazz music - I couldn't "understand it". Then I started to
listen to Jamiroquai a lot - a funky Jazz/Techno hybrid. Then later I
found that I had learned to like Jazz - I could now "understand it" and
know its patterns - but I needed a stepping stone to get there. It
might be that some starts using Pharo with their favourite text editor
as a comfort factor, as a stepping stone, and then migrates over time
to the standard editors. So that is a path to draw in new users - but
of course that takes effort to set up.
cheers -ben

Same goes with Unix interop. REPL is easy, but is it documented and
marketed? What would it take to easily pipe output of other programs to
Pharo? Maybe be able to sourceCodeString exportAsUnixCommand:
'/usr/bin/my_cool_command'

We're usually do screencasts of "blue plane ideas that people don't even
know they need". A series of "pink plane things that people are attached to,
even if they would probably give them up if they grokked Smalltalk", but
presented as serious how-tos, could really help us grow to critical mass.

-
Cheers,
Sean
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Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-29 Thread Sebastian Sastre


On Apr 29, 2014, at 2:08 PM, Ben Coman b...@openinworld.com wrote:

 Why do some people prefer rock music and others classical music?   Its about 
 the patterns they know.  Our brains naturally try to cram each experience 
 into a pattern it already knows.  I remember when I used to dislike Jazz 
 music - I couldn't understand it.  Then I started to listen to Jamiroquai a 
 lot - a funky Jazz/Techno hybrid.   Then later I found that I had learned to 
 like Jazz - I could now understand it and know its patterns - but I needed 
 a stepping stone to get there.  It might be that some starts using Pharo with 
 their favourite text editor as a comfort factor, as a stepping stone, and 
 then migrates over time to the standard editors.  So that is a path to draw 
 in new users - but of course that takes effort to set up.
 cheers -ben

This is interesting, you’re talking of acquired taste here.

Things that needs time and context and repetition to sink in.

What’s also interesting is Jamiroquai, because he’s work was your bridge to 
Jazz.

He did the inception.

Now the question is this:

Who in the industry is functioning as our Jamiroquai?

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 6:58 PM, kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com wrote:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is
 dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came
 to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.


Pharo is a strategic platform to me. Productivity on that thing cannot be
beaten. Still had proof today when looking for a nasty bug.

Phil



 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.frwrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems
 like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the
 same way again.


 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website.

Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is
dead / extinct ?

As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came
to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.frwrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems
 like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the
 same way again.


 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-28 Thread Norbert Hartl


Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website. 
 
 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is 
 dead / extinct ?   
 
 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to 
 Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages 
 out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this 
 sorry that I am dead mentality to them. 
 
+1 

Well said.

Norbert
 
 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.fr wrote:
 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:
 
 MountainWest RubyConf 2014
 
 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”
 
 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like 
 it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, 
 it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the 
 programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using 
 Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show 
 you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live 
 coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.
 
 
 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language
that is Smalltalk-inspired.

We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).

Doru


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl norb...@hartl.name wrote:


 Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is
 dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came
 to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

 +1

 Well said.

 Norbert


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.frwrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems
 like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the
 same way again.


 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk






-- 
www.tudorgirba.com

Every thing has its own flow

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


On Apr 28, 2014, at 1:58 PM, kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com wrote:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new website. 
 
 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is 
 dead / extinct ?   
 
Is not on video but for what’s worth, I don’t know from were you take that 
impression but I’m pretty sure that what you described in the previous 
paragraph was not the impression the audience got from my talk.

“Dead / extinct” for the industry is a matter of nailing it when you expose 
talent and the tools that can expand it. Can you do cool projects with it? if 
you do then that’s your place, good for you, go for more, and give something in 
return.

The hard work of this community is continuing the legacy of an inspiring legend.

A legend that inspires them when you take the time and effort to break with 
self-serving tasks and start to expose it instead



 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came to 
 Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of languages 
 out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't have this 
 sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-28 Thread Eliot Miranda

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language
 that is Smalltalk-inspired.


We went through this a few months ago.  Pharo  isn't inspired by Smalltalk;
it /is/ a Smalltalk.   Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and claiming
inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO as bad as
apologizing for it being dead.


 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


We don't need to avoid the S word either...



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl norb...@hartl.name wrote:


 Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk
 is dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came
 to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

 +1

 Well said.

 Norbert


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.frwrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems
 like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the
 same way again.


 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk






 --
 www.tudorgirba.com

 Every thing has its own flow




-- 
best,
Eliot

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-28 Thread S Krish

+1

Smalltalk heritage and its future should be carried on by Pharo Smalltalk.


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:08 PM, Eliot Miranda eliot.mira...@gmail.comwrote:




 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.comwrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and
 language that is Smalltalk-inspired.


 We went through this a few months ago.  Pharo  isn't inspired by
 Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk.   Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and
 claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO
 as bad as apologizing for it being dead.


 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


 We don't need to avoid the S word either...



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl norb...@hartl.namewrote:


 Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk
 is dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I
 came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

 +1

 Well said.

 Norbert


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker 
 marcus.den...@inria.frwrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems
 like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the
 same way again.


 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk






 --
 www.tudorgirba.com

 Every thing has its own flow




 --
 best,
 Eliot

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language 
 that is Smalltalk-inspired.
 
 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


nice joke

Talking of Smalltalk-inspired…. Ruby is that, and is very successful BTW

So, yeah, we are aware that it would be incredibly lame to try to fool 
ourselves and the world by trying to sell the idea that Pharo is not a 
Smalltalk.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

It is good when an outsider talks about your stuff, they have views
we simply can't have because reflection is not always possible.

I think he nails the point about the shift from what's become
important and what not (24:45), and the monolithic or mandatory
approach of Smalltalk in general, vs the small utilities working
together
(Mainly Rule of Composition and Rule of Diversity).
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html

I think this has to do with the fact that Smalltalk was born with a
GUI, and then built down from there, instead of being born as a
command line program with an added GUI layer on top.

However, thank you for sharing, it is a good presentation. And I like
to see the enthusiasm of other when they meet Smalltalk. The MagLev
presentation is good too
(http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3285-mwrc-maglev-from-download-to-deploy).

Regards!





Esteban A. Maringolo


2014-04-28 13:12 GMT-03:00 Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.fr:
 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems like 
 it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented structures, 
 it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different, from the 
 programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple syntax. Using 
 Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new eyes. We’ll show 
 you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through some sample code. Live 
 coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the same way again.

 
 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

Sebastian you are absolutely correct, I did not understand that he was
referring to a stereotype that ruby community has about smalltalk. I
apologize.


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 8:27 PM, Sebastian Sastre 
sebast...@flowingconcept.com wrote:


 On Apr 28, 2014, at 1:58 PM, kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com wrote:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk is
 dead / extinct ?

 Is not on video but for what’s worth, I don’t know from were you take that
 impression but I’m pretty sure that what you described in the previous
 paragraph was *not* the impression the audience got from my talk.

 “Dead / extinct” for the industry is a matter of nailing it when you
 expose talent and the tools that can expand it. Can you do cool projects
 with it? if you do then that’s your place, good for you, go for more, and
 give something in return.

 The hard work of this community is continuing the legacy of an inspiring
 legend.

 A legend that inspires them when you take the time and effort to break
 with self-serving tasks and start to expose it instead



 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I came
 to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:57 PM, kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com wrote:

 Sebastian you are absolutely correct, I did not understand that he was 
 referring to a stereotype that ruby community has about smalltalk. I 
 apologize. 

Is important that we talk these things so we understand how to break 
stereotypes that aren’t doing any good.

So thanks for expressing it

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

Hi,

I do not claim that Pharo does not look like a Smalltalk now. It does as it
shares quite a bit with the model. But, I do claim that it already has
distinctive characteristics that make it go away from a classic
Smalltalk. And there will be more and more in the future.

So, what is better as a communication strategy:
- to say that Pharo is a Smalltalk with traits, modular compiler, slots
and moldable debugger, ... (more to come in this list), or
- to say that Pharo is a modern Smalltalk-inspired system?
?

We are not fooling anyone. We simply state that while we respect everything
that Smalltalk stands for, Pharo will not be bound to it. This is not being
disrespectful, it is simply creating the premise to look at how else we can
invent the future. And there is so much to invent there.

Doru


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:56 PM, Sebastian Sastre 
sebast...@flowingconcept.com wrote:


 On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language
 that is Smalltalk-inspired.

 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


 nice joke

 Talking of Smalltalk-inspired…. Ruby is that, and is very successful BTW

 So, yeah, we are aware that it would be incredibly lame to try to fool
 ourselves and the world by trying to sell the idea that Pharo is *not* *a
 Smalltalk*.




-- 
www.tudorgirba.com

Every thing has its own flow

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

my pleasure

I missed a couple of words he said in the video, hence my misunderstanding.
As always few words are enough to turn a meaning on its head. Watched it
once more and now it clear that he presented Smalltalk in a very fair
manner. I also completely agree with his criticism on smalltalk of being
unsafe (though the same can be said about python and ruby and C/C++  and
loads of other programming languages out there) and not playing well with
others. Great demo for Smalltalk, realistic and fair.


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:21 PM, Sebastian Sastre 
sebast...@flowingconcept.com wrote:


 On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:57 PM, kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com wrote:

 Sebastian you are absolutely correct, I did not understand that he was
 referring to a stereotype that ruby community has about smalltalk. I
 apologize.


 Is important that we talk these things so we understand how to break
 stereotypes that aren’t doing any good.

 So thanks for expressing it

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

Fair enough.

But to me the distinction is like Scheme and Common Lisp. They're
dialects of Lisp.
Other example is Racket, that tries to sell itself as a superior
Lisp/Scheme, as TypeScript tries to sell itself as a superset of
JavaScript :)

To me, they're all Lisp. As Pharo IS Smalltalk. Smalltalk as a
moniker, not as a particular spec.

Regards!


Esteban A. Maringolo


2014-04-28 15:24 GMT-03:00 Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com:
 Hi,

 I do not claim that Pharo does not look like a Smalltalk now. It does as it
 shares quite a bit with the model. But, I do claim that it already has
 distinctive characteristics that make it go away from a classic Smalltalk.
 And there will be more and more in the future.

 So, what is better as a communication strategy:
 - to say that Pharo is a Smalltalk with traits, modular compiler, slots and
 moldable debugger, ... (more to come in this list), or
 - to say that Pharo is a modern Smalltalk-inspired system?
 ?

 We are not fooling anyone. We simply state that while we respect everything
 that Smalltalk stands for, Pharo will not be bound to it. This is not being
 disrespectful, it is simply creating the premise to look at how else we can
 invent the future. And there is so much to invent there.

 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:56 PM, Sebastian Sastre
 sebast...@flowingconcept.com wrote:


 On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and language
 that is Smalltalk-inspired.

 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


 nice joke

 Talking of Smalltalk-inspired…. Ruby is that, and is very successful BTW

 So, yeah, we are aware that it would be incredibly lame to try to fool
 ourselves and the world by trying to sell the idea that Pharo is not a
 Smalltalk.




 --
 www.tudorgirba.com

 Every thing has its own flow

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-28 Thread Eliot Miranda

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 Hi Eliot,

 I know we went through it, and we still disagree :). I have provided
 detailed arguments and I have seen no others that did refute mine.


OK, I'll bite :-).  Point me to the arguments and I'll have a go at
refutation.  But my statement that Pharo is a Smalltalk boils own to the
facts that Smalltalk has always evolved (Multiple inheritance was a
discarded experiment that is in Smalltalk-80 for example, Tweak contains a
sort-of slot idea, as another) and that Pharo's evolutions are no different
to other evolutions that have enriched Smalltalk but not redefined it, and
that one way to tell is to see if the VM or instruction set needs to be
radically different to implement the system efficiently.  So there's
nothing un-Smalltalk about traits, or slots or a modular compiler.


 I am certainly open to talking about it. I have no intention of lying or
 hiding. I am rather proud to be part of this community and to do my bit of
 contributing.


Us both.


 But, please understand that my main concern is getting Pharo adopted which
 is what other Smalltalk rooted systems did not really manage until now.
 There are many ways to say the same thing. Some people will resonate with
 some messages, and some others will pick holes in them. I will focus on
 increasing the first set of people while preserving the semantics I believe
 in.


Quite.  Agreed.



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:38 PM, Eliot Miranda eliot.mira...@gmail.comwrote:




 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.comwrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and
 language that is Smalltalk-inspired.


 We went through this a few months ago.  Pharo  isn't inspired by
 Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk.   Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and
 claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO
 as bad as apologizing for it being dead.


 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


 We don't need to avoid the S word either...



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl norb...@hartl.namewrote:


 Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk
 is dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I
 came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

 +1

 Well said.

 Norbert


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker 
 marcus.den...@inria.frwrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems
 like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through 
 some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the
 same way again.


 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk






 --
 www.tudorgirba.com

 Every thing has its own flow




 --
 best,
 Eliot




 --
 www.tudorgirba.com

 Every thing has its own flow




-- 
best,
Eliot

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

I think for people coming outside , it wont matter whether Pharo is
Smalltalk or Smalltalk-inspired. Chances are that they wont care about the
semantics at all, just what pharo can do for me now. And its great you
all focus on the practical side and not the philosophical side.

Also if you think about it even though you may disagree what you should
name Pharo as, as soon as you start describing Pharo in detail you will be
saying the exact same things.

I think the secret is not to try to make people understand what Pharo is in
a few words. Just describing what live coding means for Pharo is a rather
long talk. Unfortunately thats the downside when you creating a quite
different product from what already exists out there, your users will take
some time to realyl appreciate what the fuzz is all about.

When I started with python it was BOOM a dynamic language that tries to
keep things simple and small , thats what python is all about. Took me
literally a couple of days to realise what I had in front me.

With Squeak and Pharo it took several tries, it took me a couple of days to
realise the importance of blocks and why loops and ifs had to to use this
strange thing.

I once laughed at the video when he pointed that pressing enter on
workspace does not run the code. That was a WTF moment for me when I
first tried workspace in Squeak. Many other strange things , instance
variables by default private , Transcript separate from Workspace, no
source files etc etc.


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:08 PM, Eliot Miranda eliot.mira...@gmail.comwrote:




 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.comwrote:

 Hi Eliot,

 I know we went through it, and we still disagree :). I have provided
 detailed arguments and I have seen no others that did refute mine.


 OK, I'll bite :-).  Point me to the arguments and I'll have a go at
 refutation.  But my statement that Pharo is a Smalltalk boils own to the
 facts that Smalltalk has always evolved (Multiple inheritance was a
 discarded experiment that is in Smalltalk-80 for example, Tweak contains a
 sort-of slot idea, as another) and that Pharo's evolutions are no different
 to other evolutions that have enriched Smalltalk but not redefined it, and
 that one way to tell is to see if the VM or instruction set needs to be
 radically different to implement the system efficiently.  So there's
 nothing un-Smalltalk about traits, or slots or a modular compiler.


 I am certainly open to talking about it. I have no intention of lying or
 hiding. I am rather proud to be part of this community and to do my bit of
 contributing.


 Us both.


 But, please understand that my main concern is getting Pharo adopted
 which is what other Smalltalk rooted systems did not really manage until
 now. There are many ways to say the same thing. Some people will resonate
 with some messages, and some others will pick holes in them. I will focus
 on increasing the first set of people while preserving the semantics I
 believe in.


 Quite.  Agreed.



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:38 PM, Eliot Miranda 
 eliot.mira...@gmail.comwrote:




 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.comwrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and
 language that is Smalltalk-inspired.


 We went through this a few months ago.  Pharo  isn't inspired by
 Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk.   Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and
 claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO
 as bad as apologizing for it being dead.


 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


 We don't need to avoid the S word either...



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl norb...@hartl.namewrote:


 Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why
 smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I
 came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority 
 of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

 +1

 Well said.

 Norbert


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.fr
  wrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It
 seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar 
 Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with 
 new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through 
 some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved.

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


On Apr 28, 2014, at 3:24 PM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 So, what is better as a communication strategy:
 - to say that Pharo is a Smalltalk with traits, modular compiler, slots and 
 moldable debugger, ... (more to come in this list), or
 - to say that Pharo is a modern Smalltalk-inspired system?
 ?

The first pitch totally sucks of course but for the sake of getting to your 
point, it depends on who the audience is, right?

If you’re trying too hard to differentiate yourself from other Smalltalk 
dialects, then “modern Smalltalk-inspired system” might have a chance.

But what that chance might lead you to? What’s the best thing that can happen 
with that strategy?

That you steal some market space for your preferred dialect in a zero-sum game 
of an already very small community?

Okay, let’s talk about the opposite direction. A non-zero-sum game. What about 
trying to connect with a wider audience? You’ll need something that serves as 
foundation to build on top of. Something inspiring. 

Now let’s do the numbers..

A) What’s the size of the whole smalltalk community? what you can have from it? 
2%? 10%? 20% conversion? let’s say you get 80% because you’re amazing beyond 
disbelief.

B) What’s the size of the whole dynamic technology community? if you get 0.001% 
from it you multiplied the smalltalkers on the surface of this planet by x100 
times

So what strategy really deserves your effort?

For me it’s pretty clear where the winner and looser communication strategy 
resides, I actually saw it in action and it wasn’t even hard. I also assume 
we’re for a winner strategy but I actually have no idea on how Pharo is 
managing its branding and Smalltalk has still to prove to itself it can 
actually market itself properly

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-28 16:31 GMT-03:00 kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:
 I once laughed at the video when he pointed that pressing enter on workspace
 does not run the code. That was a WTF moment for me when I first tried
 workspace in Squeak. Many other strange things , instance variables by
 default private , Transcript separate from Workspace, no source files etc
 etc.

Because it is too weird to be grasped properly. Most if not all people
expect scripted or REPL/Console execution.
Also it is weird the fact that you can modify everything while
running. It causes a dissonance.
I felt that when I was introduced to Smalltalk, and years after that I
found the same reception in newcomers. So it wasn't just me.

Smalltalk is so great, that it is hard to summarize many of it awesome
features in a short demo.

One point for selling Pharo to non-smalltalkers is thinking in what
the benefit they would get by developing with it.

Maybe we should brainstorm on this point:
If you were to recommend Pharo to a Java/Ruby/PHP programmer, what
would be your two main selling points?
(https://twitter.com/emaringolo/status/460867076178341888)

IMHO, it is not a simple question to answer, because an existing
smalltalker will get much more out of it than a newcomer.

Regards!

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

For some reason, you are under the impression that I focus on the Smalltalk
community. I have no intention of going there. Our goal is precisely the
opposite - the developer community at large.

It is precisely for this reason that I will keep on saying that Pharo is a
modern language and environment that people should look at and that happens
to be inspired by Smalltalk.

You see, when something is dead (and this is what Smalltalk is in the mind
of everyone else that is not in our inner circle) you need a miracle.
Miracles are hard to produce, but magic isn't. We are actually pretty good
at magic, so I will pick a game in which magic will do just fine. Hence,
Pharo is Pharo and all the magic that comes with it.

Doru


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Sebastian Sastre 
sebast...@flowingconcept.com wrote:


 On Apr 28, 2014, at 3:24 PM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 So, what is better as a communication strategy:
 - to say that Pharo is a Smalltalk with traits, modular compiler, slots
 and moldable debugger, ... (more to come in this list), or
 - to say that Pharo is a modern Smalltalk-inspired system?
 ?


 The first pitch totally sucks of course but for the sake of getting to
 your point, it depends on who the audience is, right?

 If you’re trying too hard to differentiate yourself from other Smalltalk
 dialects, then *“modern Smalltalk-inspired system” *might have a chance.

 But what that chance might lead you to? What’s the best thing that can
 happen with that strategy?

 That you steal some market space for your preferred dialect in a zero-sum
 game of an already very small community?

 Okay, let’s talk about the opposite direction. A non-zero-sum game. What
 about trying to connect with a wider audience? You’ll need something that
 serves as foundation to build on top of. Something inspiring.

 Now let’s do the numbers..

 A) What’s the size of the whole smalltalk community? what you can have
 from it? 2%? 10%? 20% conversion? let’s say you get 80% because you’re
 amazing beyond disbelief.

 B) What’s the size of the whole dynamic technology community? if you get
 0.001% from it you multiplied the smalltalkers on the surface of this
 planet by x100 times

 So what strategy really deserves your effort?

 For me it’s pretty clear where the winner and looser communication
 strategy resides, I actually saw it in action and it wasn’t even hard. I
 also assume we’re for a winner strategy but I actually have no idea on how
 Pharo is managing its branding and Smalltalk has still to prove to itself
 it can actually market itself properly






-- 
www.tudorgirba.com

Every thing has its own flow

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:46 PM, S Krish
krishnamachari.sudha...@gmail.comwrote:


 +1

 Smalltalk heritage and its future should be carried on by Pharo
 Smalltalk.


 +1!


  On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:08 PM, Eliot Miranda 
 eliot.mira...@gmail.comwrote:




 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.comwrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and
 language that is Smalltalk-inspired.


 We went through this a few months ago.  Pharo  isn't inspired by
 Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk.   Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and
 claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO
 as bad as apologizing for it being dead.


 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


 We don't need to avoid the S word either...



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl norb...@hartl.namewrote:


 Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why smalltalk
 is dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I
 came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

 +1

 Well said.

 Norbert


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker 
 marcus.den...@inria.frwrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It seems
 like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But everything is so slightly different,
 from the programming environment, to the 1-based arrays, to the simple
 syntax. Using Smalltalk will make you look at familiar constructs with new
 eyes. We’ll show you how to get started on Smalltalk, and walk through 
 some
 sample code. Live coding may be involved. You’ll never look at objects the
 same way again.


 http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3284-mwrc-but-really-you-should-learn-smalltalk






 --
 www.tudorgirba.com

 Every thing has its own flow




 --
 best,
 Eliot

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference


On Apr 28, 2014, at 4:59 PM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.com wrote:

 For some reason, you are under the impression that I focus on the Smalltalk 
 community. I have no intention of going there. Our goal is precisely the 
 opposite - the developer community at large.

glad to hear that.

Keep showing your magic, the world will respond

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

What no REPL? Check this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3067563/using-squeak-from-a-shell

Works out of the box in Pharo 2.0. For prior versions (definitely
works in 1.3 and 1.4), first file in https://gist.github.com/2602113;

| command |
[
command := FileStream stdin nextLine.
command ~= 'exit' ] whileTrue: [ | result |
result := Compiler evaluate: command.
FileStream stdout nextPutAll: result asString; lf ].

Smalltalk snapshot: false andQuit: true.


Well, on Windows, this will suck big time, but on unix and osx, should
fare better.

IMHO, we shoould fix the stdin/stdout/stderr shit that we do have on
Pharo on Windows.


I had a shot on the VM side but that is nowhere to be complete... :-(

Phil




On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:49 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo
emaring...@gmail.comwrote:

 2014-04-28 16:31 GMT-03:00 kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:
  I once laughed at the video when he pointed that pressing enter on
 workspace
  does not run the code. That was a WTF moment for me when I first tried
  workspace in Squeak. Many other strange things , instance variables by
  default private , Transcript separate from Workspace, no source files etc
  etc.

 Because it is too weird to be grasped properly. Most if not all people
 expect scripted or REPL/Console execution.
 Also it is weird the fact that you can modify everything while
 running. It causes a dissonance.
 I felt that when I was introduced to Smalltalk, and years after that I
 found the same reception in newcomers. So it wasn't just me.

 Smalltalk is so great, that it is hard to summarize many of it awesome
 features in a short demo.

 One point for selling Pharo to non-smalltalkers is thinking in what
 the benefit they would get by developing with it.

 Maybe we should brainstorm on this point:
 If you were to recommend Pharo to a Java/Ruby/PHP programmer, what
 would be your two main selling points?
 (https://twitter.com/emaringolo/status/460867076178341888)

 IMHO, it is not a simple question to answer, because an existing
 smalltalker will get much more out of it than a newcomer.

 Regards!

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

Hi Phil,

2014-04-28 17:07 GMT-03:00 p...@highoctane.be p...@highoctane.be:
 What no REPL? Check this:
 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3067563/using-squeak-from-a-shell

 Works out of the box in Pharo 2.0. For prior versions (definitely works in
 1.3 and 1.4), first file in https://gist.github.com/2602113;

I'm not saying it is not doable, if we have workspaces we can have
something simple as a REPL (as your snippet shows).

But it is not as prominent as a workspace. And of course it doesn't
come bundled in the core image :)

E.g. Think of the Javascript console in Chrome Developer Tools, where
the console can work as a Workspace, a Transcript and an Inspector all
in one.

Or, think of python or ruby's irb.


Esteban A. Maringolo

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

Hi Eliot,

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Eliot Miranda eliot.mira...@gmail.comwrote:




 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.comwrote:

 Hi Eliot,

 I know we went through it, and we still disagree :). I have provided
 detailed arguments and I have seen no others that did refute mine.


 OK, I'll bite :-).  Point me to the arguments and I'll have a go at
 refutation.


Besides the points laid out in the discussions on this mailing list, I
provided an initial argument here:
http://www.tudorgirba.com/blog/pharo-is-pharo


 But my statement that Pharo is a Smalltalk boils own to the facts that
 Smalltalk has always evolved


I agree on that. There is a point of view from which one could say that
Pharo is Smalltalk by seeing Smalltalk as a movement, rather than specific
implementation. Unfortunately, everyone else thinks of Smalltalk as a
specific language, or set of languages with specific environments that
typically look old enough to not be relevant anymore.

(Multiple inheritance was a discarded experiment that is in Smalltalk-80
 for example, Tweak contains a sort-of slot idea, as another) and that
 Pharo's evolutions are no different to other evolutions that have enriched
 Smalltalk but not redefined it, and that one way to tell is to see if the
 VM or instruction set needs to be radically different to implement the
 system efficiently. So there's nothing un-Smalltalk about traits, or slots
 or a modular compiler.


This is where our points diverge significantly. Just because Closure or
JRuby run on a Java VM does not make them Java. They are their own
languages.

Similarly, just because Newspeak runs pretty much the same VM as Squeak or
Pharo does not make it a Smalltalk either (according to the webpage it is a
new programming language in the tradition of Self and Smalltalk). Things
that want to have an identity should be allowed to get it as long as the
due credits are acknowledged.

Saying that there is nothing un-Smalltalk about slots, or compiler or
traits and all sorts of other things is not incorrect, but saying that the
same things are not defined by Smalltalk is not incorrect either. The point
of view matters. As for deciding how much of difference should there be
until we are not to be associated with the original, I would leave that to
lawyers that have to do it. I will focus on trying to market a fantastic
environment and community.

But, there is another point, too. Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired is not just
factual but also a statement of intention. We do not want to necessarily be
Smalltalk. If the future proves that some decisions made in Smalltalk are
good we will make them, too. Otherwise we will take other routes. That's a
promise :)


I am certainly open to talking about it. I have no intention of lying or
 hiding. I am rather proud to be part of this community and to do my bit of
 contributing.


 Us both.


 But, please understand that my main concern is getting Pharo adopted
 which is what other Smalltalk rooted systems did not really manage until
 now. There are many ways to say the same thing. Some people will resonate
 with some messages, and some others will pick holes in them. I will focus
 on increasing the first set of people while preserving the semantics I
 believe in.


 Quite.  Agreed.


Great :)

Doru



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:38 PM, Eliot Miranda 
 eliot.mira...@gmail.comwrote:




 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Tudor Girba tu...@tudorgirba.comwrote:

 That is why we talk about Pharo as a cool, modern environment and
 language that is Smalltalk-inspired.


 We went through this a few months ago.  Pharo  isn't inspired by
 Smalltalk; it /is/ a Smalltalk.   Trying to be mealy-mouthed about it and
 claiming inspiration, rather than proudly declaring its a Smalltalk is IMO
 as bad as apologizing for it being dead.


 We do not need to apologize because Pharo was never dead :).


 We don't need to avoid the S word either...



 Doru


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Norbert Hartl norb...@hartl.namewrote:


 Am 28.04.2014 um 18:58 schrieb kilon alios kilon.al...@gmail.com:

 very cool presentation. Definitely you need to add this to the new
 website.

 Question : Why in every presentation we have to apologise why
 smalltalk is dead / extinct ?

 As a newcomer to Smalltalk I find it quite annoying. Its not as if I
 came to Smalltalk without knowing that is not popular. The vast majority 
 of
 languages out there are so more unpopular than Smalltalk, yet they don't
 have this sorry that I am dead mentality to them.

 +1

 Well said.

 Norbert


 On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Marcus Denker marcus.den...@inria.fr
  wrote:

 … more a Smalltalk one using Pharo:

 MountainWest RubyConf 2014

 Noel Rappin: But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk”

 Smalltalk has mystique. We talk about it more than we use it. It
 seems like it should be so similar to Ruby. It has similar 
 Object-Oriented
 structures, it even has blocks. But

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:24 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo emaring...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Hi Phil,

 2014-04-28 17:07 GMT-03:00 p...@highoctane.be p...@highoctane.be:
  What no REPL? Check this:
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3067563/using-squeak-from-a-shell
 
  Works out of the box in Pharo 2.0. For prior versions (definitely works
 in
  1.3 and 1.4), first file in https://gist.github.com/2602113;

 I'm not saying it is not doable, if we have workspaces we can have
 something simple as a REPL (as your snippet shows).

 But it is not as prominent as a workspace. And of course it doesn't
 come bundled in the core image :)

 E.g. Think of the Javascript console in Chrome Developer Tools, where
 the console can work as a Workspace, a Transcript and an Inspector all
 in one.

 Or, think of python or ruby's irb.


Nothing precludes us from having just that. Topez in Gemstone does just
that no?

Phil



 Esteban A. Maringolo

Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-28 Thread Sean P. DeNigris

Tudor Girba-2 wrote
 There is a point of view from which one could say that
 Pharo is Smalltalk by seeing Smalltalk as a movement, rather than specific
 implementation. Unfortunately, everyone else thinks of Smalltalk as a
 specific language, or set of languages with specific environments that
 typically look old enough to not be relevant anymore.

Yes! This is a tower of babel argument.
For almost every programmer alive, Smaltalk = Smalltalk 80 - Pharo is
Smalltalk-inspired
For us, Smaltalk = experimental Dynabook software that bootstraps itself
(ideally every 4 years) - Pharo is Smalltalk 109.

So it's a question of who you're marketing to. Since we're marketing to
non-Smalltalkers (quite wise since 16% market penetration is the tipping
point [1], and we're not there yet), clearly Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired
is the thing to say. It's not any more or less true than the latter, just
more useful in its context.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action



-
Cheers,
Sean
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Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference

2014-04-28 Thread Sean P. DeNigris

kilon alios wrote
 Watched it once more and now it clear that he presented Smalltalk in a
 very fair
 manner

Yes, it was very fair and a nice bridge between the Ruby and Smalltalk
communities i.e. not too elitist.


kilon alios wrote
 I also completely agree with his criticism on smalltalk of... not playing
 well with
 others

I think this has always been a red herring. How exactly does Ruby play well
with others? Wth does that mean? 

If we're talking about e.g. native windows, Ruby has bindings to GUI
libraries because it has a community big enough that is interested-in-that
enough to write them. In fact IIRC, someone wrote GTK bindings for
Squeak/Pharo, but there was little user interest and they took their code
elsewhere. There's no difference in that regard. 

Another barrier of course, is that binding to external UI libraries in a way
violates the turtles-all-the-way-down principle of Smalltalk and would only
be a kludge until you could replace them with an implementation that was
part of the live, uniform system. Although if not being satisfied with a
system that is complicated beyond human comprehension is not playing well
with others, perhaps you should reconsider your friendships ha ha ;)



-
Cheers,
Sean
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Re: [Pharo-dev] a Pharo talk from a ruby conference