Hi Paul, On 08 Jul 2014, at 21:33, Paul Davidowitz <[email protected]> wrote:
> Very nice, except all this could be done in Ruby, also elegantly. > The Smalltalk advantage is the live image, and that's where the focus > should be. I was hoping to get some discussions around this article - there is this sentence in the beginning: 'How would you tackle these problems using your favourite language ?'. Coming back to your point, IMHO, it is very hard to explain what I find so nice about Pharo/Smalltalk: it is a combination of different elements, not one single thing. I did mention the live objects idea. Another thing that I find important is that you can look at the source code of anything very easily, effortlessly, including the implementation of all tools. I do not know enough about Ruby to make authoritative comparisons, but since it is based on Smalltalk and Lisp, is dynamic and interactive, you obviously have a point: Ruby is in the right general area. Personally I do *not* like Ruby's more complex syntax (the convenience aspects, the unnecessary syntactic sugar). I also do not think a stock Ruby install/shell can do the same things as easily out of the box, but of course, Ruby will come much closer that say Java. Sven
