Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Jimmie Houchin]

Hola Offray,

Thanks for the positive reply. I was hoping you wouldn't take anything I 
wrote negatively.


On 10/13/2015 12:20 PM, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas wrote:

Hi Jimmie,



On 05/10/15 09:16, Jimmie Houchin wrote:

Hello Offray,

My apologies for the delay in reply. I have been on holiday.


No problem. I'm not as proactive as I would like on this community. 
I'm trying to gain time/knowledge to contribute more, but there are 
pending answers from me on interesting topics, so thanks for taking 
your time to answer. I have grouped your answer in two parts: Pharo 
related and other tools related. More comments below.


Correct.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am pretty much wanting to stick with 
Pharo solutions. I want to use and contribute to the Pharo ecosystem.


I believe the more we use our own tools and contribute toward the 
ecosystem the better our tools and the ecosystem will be. In Pharo I 
can possibly offer an occasional bug fix, contribute to documentation 
or tests.



[...]
In Pharo I have Pharo/Smalltalk. Even a simple user can often 
contribute in simple ways. Even as a simple user of a Pharo tool. I 
can submit issues, fix simple issues, improve method or class 
comments, etc. As I learn the Pharo tools and ecosystem I continually 
improve my ability to take care of myself and also contribute to the 
community. I think Pharo is the most user empowering environment I 
have found. 


I agree with you. I share your vision of Smalltalk as the most 
empowering environment I have used. First time we meet (vía EToys, 
Scratch, BotsInc) I felt in love, but weren't ready for each other and 
took almost 10 years and Pharo to bring me back (kind of a bittersweet 
love story). I'm a simple user, but in this last year after returning 
back I have made stuff I just thought/dream about in other 
environments. Still a lot of things to learn and rookie code and 
practice, but I'm improving faster that in any other environment, 
despite of having not as much time to practice as I would like. Even 
prototyping is faster... a lot faster.


I understand your journey. I too have been a part of this community and 
Squeak for a long time. However, between what capabilities Squeak/Pharo 
had and my skill set and project requirements, I have at times had to 
look elsewhere. Some things require the ability to use external 
libraries. This sometimes requires skills which I don't have or the 
current state of FFI/NB isn't friendly for people like me.


But I think over time Pharo is becoming more capable and hopefully at 
some point its interoperability will improve as well.


If you have the skills or can live with the few interoperability issues. 
I haven't found anything that I feel that is as empowering as Pharo.


For me my project requirements have changed and I am no longer requiring 
the use of a proprietary C++/C library.


I want to help Pharo too, by making it talk better with other/external 
ways of thinking/practicing computing. For example, after my talk with 
Serge about IPtyhon/Jupyter and Grafoscopio (my learning project) it 
was clearer to my that interactive documentation and data 
visualization was being bridged with objects via scripting (thanks to 
embedded playground in the document tree). So you can start thinking 
in a more "emergent way": documents and scripts instead of a hierarchy 
of objects and messages, and then go from your scripts in documents to 
more objectual forms as you clear your mind about the problem. This 
practice/thinking was far away ten years ago for grown ups in Etoys, 
BotsInc, as also happened with documentation (they happen elsewhere 
and not inside the image).


I am not sure I understand what you are trying to do here with Jupyter 
and Grafoscopio. I think Jupyter is exceptionally nice if you are doing 
Python. I have used it both with Python and Julia. But I don't see why 
or for what I would use it for if I have a much superior, IMO, live 
environment in Pharo.


Jupyter is a nice option to command line or repl Python. But Pharo 
(Smalltalk's) image environment is so much more than anything offered 
easily anywhere else.


And yes, the other solutions do offer that as well as they are open 
source. But the bar is much higher. I now have to understand their 
ecosystems, languages, and development cultures of a variety of tools.



[...]
Sure I can find lots and lots of other quality tools in other 
languages. But each is their own island. And depending on how broadly 
I spread the net. Different languages, different cultures, different 
licenses, all independent of each other.



[...]

I much prefer the Pharo ecosystem and culture. It is home.
I know others who like the other tools, and multiplicity of choice. 
And they feel comfortable there.




I prefer Pharo too. I have felt the "red pill" effect talked several 
times in the Pharo/Smalltalk culture. You just need to enter the 
matrix sometimes to awake others :-), which means that you share their 

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

Hi Jimmie,



On 05/10/15 09:16, Jimmie Houchin wrote:

Hello Offray,

My apologies for the delay in reply. I have been on holiday.



No problem. I'm not as proactive as I would like on this community. I'm 
trying to gain time/knowledge to contribute more, but there are pending 
answers from me on interesting topics, so thanks for taking your time to 
answer. I have grouped your answer in two parts: Pharo related and other 
tools related. More comments below.


Thanks for the suggestions. I am pretty much wanting to stick with 
Pharo solutions. I want to use and contribute to the Pharo ecosystem.


I believe the more we use our own tools and contribute toward the 
ecosystem the better our tools and the ecosystem will be. In Pharo I 
can possibly offer an occasional bug fix, contribute to documentation 
or tests.



[...]
In Pharo I have Pharo/Smalltalk. Even a simple user can often 
contribute in simple ways. Even as a simple user of a Pharo tool. I 
can submit issues, fix simple issues, improve method or class 
comments, etc. As I learn the Pharo tools and ecosystem I continually 
improve my ability to take care of myself and also contribute to the 
community. I think Pharo is the most user empowering environment I 
have found. 


I agree with you. I share your vision of Smalltalk as the most 
empowering environment I have used. First time we meet (vía EToys, 
Scratch, BotsInc) I felt in love, but weren't ready for each other and 
took almost 10 years and Pharo to bring me back (kind of a bittersweet 
love story). I'm a simple user, but in this last year after returning 
back I have made stuff I just thought/dream about in other environments. 
Still a lot of things to learn and rookie code and practice, but I'm 
improving faster that in any other environment, despite of having not as 
much time to practice as I would like. Even prototyping is faster... a 
lot faster.


I want to help Pharo too, by making it talk better with other/external 
ways of thinking/practicing computing. For example, after my talk with 
Serge about IPtyhon/Jupyter and Grafoscopio (my learning project) it was 
clearer to my that interactive documentation and data visualization was 
being bridged with objects via scripting (thanks to embedded playground 
in the document tree). So you can start thinking in a more "emergent 
way": documents and scripts instead of a hierarchy of objects and 
messages, and then go from your scripts in documents to more objectual 
forms as you clear your mind about the problem. This practice/thinking 
was far away ten years ago for grown ups in Etoys, BotsInc, as also 
happened with documentation (they happen elsewhere and not inside the 
image).



And yes, the other solutions do offer that as well as they are open 
source. But the bar is much higher. I now have to understand their 
ecosystems, languages, and development cultures of a variety of tools.



[...]
Sure I can find lots and lots of other quality tools in other 
languages. But each is their own island. And depending on how broadly 
I spread the net. Different languages, different cultures, different 
licenses, all independent of each other.



[...]

I much prefer the Pharo ecosystem and culture. It is home.
I know others who like the other tools, and multiplicity of choice. 
And they feel comfortable there.




I prefer Pharo too. I have felt the "red pill" effect talked several 
times in the Pharo/Smalltalk culture. You just need to enter the matrix 
sometimes to awake others :-), which means that you share their reality 
for a while to teach them you can bend the rules or have super powers 
after taking the red pill. But you need to enter the matrix to offer 
them the red pill. My way to enter the matrix and made that offer is via 
interactive documentation, scripting and data visualization, because 
this juncture appeals a lot of people beyond programmers (like myself).


The way I want to use to evade the complexities of other technologies, 
idiosyncrasies and cultures is try to talk only with the backend 
(storage formats/schemas) and frontend (these days mostly html). But I 
want to use what I already have and know to make that bridge. Put 
Pharo/Smalltalk in the existing practices and technologies in a 
symbiotic approach (or something like the assimilation of of star trek's 
cyborgs, until "resistance is futile", to follow with SciFi images :-) 
).  I have blogged recently about a specific case for this approach here:


http://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/2015-10-06-grav-nikola-both


Choice is nice. Pharo is mine.



:-)+3 to follow Sthepharo and Doru.

Thanks again for suggestions and for a view on how others approach 
problems and their solutions. That is always available as inspiration 
even within Pharo. I take a look at your stuff.




Nice to help.

Cheers,

Offray

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[stepharo]

In Pharo I have Pharo/Smalltalk. Even a simple user can often 
contribute in simple ways. Even as a simple user of a Pharo tool. I 
can submit issues, fix simple issues, improve method or class 
comments, etc. As I learn the Pharo tools and ecosystem I continually 
improve my ability to take care of myself and also contribute to the 
community. I think Pharo is the most user empowering environment I 
have found. Sure I can find lots and lots of other quality tools in 
other languages. But each is their own island. And depending on how 
broadly I spread the net. Different languages, different cultures, 
different licenses, all independent of each other.


I much prefer the Pharo ecosystem and culture. It is home.
I know others who like the other tools, and multiplicity of choice. 
And they feel comfortable there.


Choice is nice. Pharo is mine.

:)



Thanks again for suggestions and for a view on how others approach 
problems and their solutions. That is always available as inspiration 
even within Pharo. I take a look at your stuff.


Jimmie


On 09/28/2015 09:03 AM, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas wrote:

Hi Jimmie,

Some or your searches/needs seem similar to mine. So I will share 
some of the stuff I'm using or considering, which is not 
Pharo/Smalltalk related and how I plan to connect it with Pharo.


On markup language and documentation I'm using pandoc[1], which 
covers a wide variety of formats (including Html and LaTeX, like 
Pillar) and works on Windows, Gnu/Linux and Mac with a pretty 
portable installation. I use Zotero[2] integration vía BibTeX and 
Citezen[3] using Grafoscopio[4], a custom made Pharo interactive 
documentation system I'm building to learn smalltalk. On the website 
generation, I was a user/promoter of web2py[5] for several year, but 
recently I'm migrating towards static site genetators like Nikola[6] 
and Grav[7] because I don't need any much else for my web presence.


[1] http://pandoc.org/
[2] https://www.zotero.org/
[3] 
http://vst.ensm-douai.fr/ESUG2009Media/uploads/1/citezen-EsugAwards2009.pdf

[4] http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Offray/Grafoscopio
[5] http://web2py.com/
[6] https://getnikola.com/
[7] http://getgrav.org/

My idea is to build an interface from Grafoscopio to this non-pharo 
technologies like static web site generators, so you can use the 
interactivity of Pharo/Smalltalk, without having to reinvent the 
wheel all the time (at least for wheels yo don't care about). I'm 
trying to find the knowledge/time to put this ideas into practice. 
Maybe you can consider some of these in your initial overview of the 
problem and the solutions.


Cheers,

Offray

On 22/09/15 11:30, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
I know there are options to Pier. To a certain extent part of the 
purpose of my email was to explore whether or not Pier is a viable 
option and if it has community support that I am not easily seeing.


I want to stick with reasonably well supported options.

I thought the cms and blog parts of Pier looked interesting. This is 
all personal and not for business or public.


I definitely want to learn Pillar as it is required if at some point 
I want to contribute to any of the documentation. And it looks like 
a pretty powerful tool.


I do not have any clearly defined goals which make Pier a 
requirement. The blog and cms like features are possibly reasonably 
implementable in the more currently supported options. And those are 
simply things I am exploring not requiring.


It seems that Doru possibly uses it on the 
http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog site.


Thanks.

Jimmie

On 09/22/2015 02:38 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:

Hi,

Jimmie Houchin  writes:

I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing 
list to

learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty
quiet on the mailing lists.

There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3.


Pillar, the document model and parser of Pier is alive. I need help 
but

the project is definitely not dead as we use it for all books we are
writing.

The rest of Pier, mainly the web interface, looks rather dead for 
me as

well.

Why are you interested in Pier? We might help you find other projects
that could suit your needs.

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Jimmie Houchin]

Hello Offray,

My apologies for the delay in reply. I have been on holiday.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am pretty much wanting to stick with Pharo 
solutions. I want to use and contribute to the Pharo ecosystem.


I believe the more we use our own tools and contribute toward the 
ecosystem the better our tools and the ecosystem will be. In Pharo I can 
possibly offer an occasional bug fix, contribute to documentation or tests.


And yes, the other solutions do offer that as well as they are open 
source. But the bar is much higher. I now have to understand their 
ecosystems, languages, and development cultures of a variety of tools.


In Pharo I have Pharo/Smalltalk. Even a simple user can often contribute 
in simple ways. Even as a simple user of a Pharo tool. I can submit 
issues, fix simple issues, improve method or class comments, etc. As I 
learn the Pharo tools and ecosystem I continually improve my ability to 
take care of myself and also contribute to the community. I think Pharo 
is the most user empowering environment I have found. Sure I can find 
lots and lots of other quality tools in other languages. But each is 
their own island. And depending on how broadly I spread the net. 
Different languages, different cultures, different licenses, all 
independent of each other.


I much prefer the Pharo ecosystem and culture. It is home.
I know others who like the other tools, and multiplicity of choice. And 
they feel comfortable there.


Choice is nice. Pharo is mine.

Thanks again for suggestions and for a view on how others approach 
problems and their solutions. That is always available as inspiration 
even within Pharo. I take a look at your stuff.


Jimmie


On 09/28/2015 09:03 AM, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas wrote:

Hi Jimmie,

Some or your searches/needs seem similar to mine. So I will share some 
of the stuff I'm using or considering, which is not Pharo/Smalltalk 
related and how I plan to connect it with Pharo.


On markup language and documentation I'm using pandoc[1], which covers 
a wide variety of formats (including Html and LaTeX, like Pillar) and 
works on Windows, Gnu/Linux and Mac with a pretty portable 
installation. I use Zotero[2] integration vía BibTeX and Citezen[3] 
using Grafoscopio[4], a custom made Pharo interactive documentation 
system I'm building to learn smalltalk. On the website generation, I 
was a user/promoter of web2py[5] for several year, but recently I'm 
migrating towards static site genetators like Nikola[6] and Grav[7] 
because I don't need any much else for my web presence.


[1] http://pandoc.org/
[2] https://www.zotero.org/
[3] 
http://vst.ensm-douai.fr/ESUG2009Media/uploads/1/citezen-EsugAwards2009.pdf

[4] http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Offray/Grafoscopio
[5] http://web2py.com/
[6] https://getnikola.com/
[7] http://getgrav.org/

My idea is to build an interface from Grafoscopio to this non-pharo 
technologies like static web site generators, so you can use the 
interactivity of Pharo/Smalltalk, without having to reinvent the wheel 
all the time (at least for wheels yo don't care about). I'm trying to 
find the knowledge/time to put this ideas into practice. Maybe you can 
consider some of these in your initial overview of the problem and the 
solutions.


Cheers,

Offray

On 22/09/15 11:30, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
I know there are options to Pier. To a certain extent part of the 
purpose of my email was to explore whether or not Pier is a viable 
option and if it has community support that I am not easily seeing.


I want to stick with reasonably well supported options.

I thought the cms and blog parts of Pier looked interesting. This is 
all personal and not for business or public.


I definitely want to learn Pillar as it is required if at some point 
I want to contribute to any of the documentation. And it looks like a 
pretty powerful tool.


I do not have any clearly defined goals which make Pier a 
requirement. The blog and cms like features are possibly reasonably 
implementable in the more currently supported options. And those are 
simply things I am exploring not requiring.


It seems that Doru possibly uses it on the 
http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog site.


Thanks.

Jimmie

On 09/22/2015 02:38 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:

Hi,

Jimmie Houchin  writes:


I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing list to
learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty
quiet on the mailing lists.

There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3.


Pillar, the document model and parser of Pier is alive. I need help but
the project is definitely not dead as we use it for all books we are
writing.

The rest of Pier, mainly the web interface, looks rather dead for me as
well.

Why are you interested in Pier? We might help you find other projects
that could suit your needs.

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Damien Cassou]

Jimmie Houchin  writes:

> I definitely want to learn Pillar as it is required if at some point I 
> want to contribute to any of the documentation. And it looks like a 
> pretty powerful tool.


indeed


> I do not have any clearly defined goals which make Pier a requirement.
> The blog and cms like features are possibly reasonably implementable
> in the more currently supported options. And those are simply things I
> am exploring not requiring.


you might want to use Pillar directly to generate a static website and
add some dynamic plugins (such as Disqus for the comments). Ecstatic
(https://github.com/guillep/ecstatic) goes in that direction.

-- 
Damien Cassou
http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without
losing enthusiasm." --Winston Churchill

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Jimmie Houchin]

On 09/23/2015 02:59 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:

Jimmie Houchin  writes:

I definitely want to learn Pillar as it is required if at some point I
want to contribute to any of the documentation. And it looks like a
pretty powerful tool.

indeed

I do not have any clearly defined goals which make Pier a requirement.
The blog and cms like features are possibly reasonably implementable
in the more currently supported options. And those are simply things I
am exploring not requiring.

you might want to use Pillar directly to generate a static website and
add some dynamic plugins (such as Disqus for the comments). Ecstatic
(https://github.com/guillep/ecstatic) goes in that direction.


Thanks for the information. I briefly had that thought about static 
generation yesterday. But did not have any thoughts for comments.


I give that a look.

Thanks.

Jimmie

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Jimmie Houchin]

I know there are options to Pier. To a certain extent part of the 
purpose of my email was to explore whether or not Pier is a viable 
option and if it has community support that I am not easily seeing.


I want to stick with reasonably well supported options.

I thought the cms and blog parts of Pier looked interesting. This is all 
personal and not for business or public.


I definitely want to learn Pillar as it is required if at some point I 
want to contribute to any of the documentation. And it looks like a 
pretty powerful tool.


I do not have any clearly defined goals which make Pier a requirement. 
The blog and cms like features are possibly reasonably implementable in 
the more currently supported options. And those are simply things I am 
exploring not requiring.


It seems that Doru possibly uses it on the 
http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog site.


Thanks.

Jimmie

On 09/22/2015 02:38 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:

Hi,

Jimmie Houchin  writes:


I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing list to
learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty
quiet on the mailing lists.

There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3.


Pillar, the document model and parser of Pier is alive. I need help but
the project is definitely not dead as we use it for all books we are
writing.

The rest of Pier, mainly the web interface, looks rather dead for me as
well.

Why are you interested in Pier? We might help you find other projects
that could suit your needs.

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Stephan Eggermont]

On 21-09-15 23:44, Jimmie Houchin wrote:

Hello,

I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing list to
learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty
quiet on the mailing lists.

There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3.

I am interested to see how well supported Pier is (is going to be).

And if Pier is still active in the community. Is there any current
documentation and where?

Thanks for any help and opinions regarding Pier and its current and
future situation.


We run a few pier sites, one of which uses bootstrap. The configuration
of pier needs updating to no longer track the (incompatible) changes in 
pillar. Apart from that it is very stable. Not all of the add-ons are up 
to date. We run the sites so, that they monitor a package cache 
directory and load newer versions of the site automatically, so we can 
just do a git push to update.


Stephan

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Damien Cassou]

Hi,

Jimmie Houchin  writes:

> I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing list to 
> learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty 
> quiet on the mailing lists.
>
> There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3.


Pillar, the document model and parser of Pier is alive. I need help but
the project is definitely not dead as we use it for all books we are
writing.

The rest of Pier, mainly the web interface, looks rather dead for me as
well.

Why are you interested in Pier? We might help you find other projects
that could suit your needs.

-- 
Damien Cassou
http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without
losing enthusiasm." --Winston Churchill

Re: [Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Hernán Morales Durand]

I don't know the answer but I am really interested to read it.

Hernán


2015-09-21 18:44 GMT-03:00 Jimmie Houchin :

> Hello,
>
> I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing list to
> learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty quiet
> on the mailing lists.
>
> There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3.
>
> I am interested to see how well supported Pier is (is going to be).
>
> And if Pier is still active in the community. Is there any current
> documentation and where?
>
> Thanks for any help and opinions regarding Pier and its current and future
> situation.
>
> Jimmie
>
>

[Pharo-users] Exploring Pier

[Jimmie Houchin]

Hello,

I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing list to 
learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty 
quiet on the mailing lists.


There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3.

I am interested to see how well supported Pier is (is going to be).

And if Pier is still active in the community. Is there any current 
documentation and where?


Thanks for any help and opinions regarding Pier and its current and 
future situation.


Jimmie