I love this attitude coming from the very core of the Pharo dev-team, which felt to me as being blind to what other dialects were doing or did in the past, and these is days seems to be catching up quite quickly.
Dolphin Smalltalk: Practically all "widgets" (aka "views") are the native ones, and they behave as expected by a Windows user, both in terms of shortcuts, styling, etc. It feels like a Smalltalk built by Microsoft itself. The MVP approach to build GUIs is, in my experience, the best of all available options, and the way the Presenters and Views are factored is great, for what I could see, Spec 2.0 is going in that direction and I like. Some could say this would restrict you from building "different" apps, but IMO that is another layer that must be built on top of the basic building blocks. It doesn't use pragmas (I particularly don't like them much), but there are "hooks" everywhere to add items to tooling menus, etc. The consistency and coherence of the whole system is outstanding, not only in terms of UI, and I think it is the result of two great developers (and I would argue only one in terms of UI), working for over a decade in refining, trimming and polishing every corner of the app while also using it for their own personal and business developments. Dolphin had both a commercial purpose and a utility purpose, the first as a vendor to fulfill developer needs, but the others for them as a business to develop their own applications. So in the end they were profiting from scratching their own itch. So what I would love to have in Pharo from Dolphin? The UX consistency that a workspace context menu is as similar as the one in the browser code or the one in the Debugger (e.g. Why I can't do an "extract method" refactoring within the debugger?). The concept of a SessionManager is great also, you could "deploy" your image to have a session manager that will handle headless command line application, a full blown UI or even be used an out of process COM server. There are many cons, but we're focusing only in what I'd like. I developed with Dolphin for more than +10 years , building business critical application with it. VisualWorks I use it every day and don't miss much from it, except that the UI is snappier than the current in Pharo. There is no lag the interaction with most widgets. Certain things such as breakpoints and bread and butter things "just work". What I would like in Pharo from VW?: Multiple windows, robust tooling and snappier UI. I don't miss the namespacing, because I understand there are better things in the makings for Pharo :) VisualAge/VAST: I have only used it up to v5.5, but the "Interrupt" button it has worked, I never understood how it was implemented, but no matter how tight the recursion loop was, you hit that "stop everything" button, and everything stopped. For those that don't know, the VAST IDE had an external small window that just had a button, that worked as a panic button to halt the execution of the image. Very much like the [Alt]+[.] of Pharo, but, again, it worked magically. What I would like in Pharo from VAST?: THAT BUTTON. :D Smalltalk/X It always feelt alien to me and it is more an "utility" dialect for themselves that they happened to make public. The nicest thing I found is that it had multiple windows where each window has it's own process! This is very much like Chromium/Chrome works, where you can kill a single tab and keep the other tabs working. What I would like: That capability, although I think this would require an overhaul of the current VM. Cuis Smalltalk: It is the most "approachable" of the Squeak spin-offs, it feels like the most "Dolphin like" of the them as in it is the only that can be understood as a whole by a single person and whose tools can be learnt by inference. They recently added LiveTyping and other "live info" capabilities <https://twitter.com/HernanWilkinson/status/1087325709289357312> than, AFAIU, can be easily added to Pharo as well as long as they add a few extensions to the VM. What I would like: LiveTyping and friends. Summarizing: There are many things out there, but even so, I find Pharo the most enjoyable of all existing dialects, and everyday when I come back to it to work on some personal project I notice how far it has gone from most of the above. But sometimes I enjoy it as I enjoy working out or playing golf: I enjoy it but not without effort and some pain from my side, maybe I finish the day saying I need to find an alternative and then the next day I'm there wanting to use it again. :) Regards, Esteban A. Maringolo El mié., 10 abr. 2019 a las 3:26, Esteban Lorenzano (<esteba...@gmail.com>) escribió: > > Hi, > > Time to time I hear people like Richard saying “Dolphin is the dialect most > beautiful Smalltalk he used” and others praising it in different levels. > As Pharo “architect” (or whatever I am, but at least I’m sure I have to pay > attention to the IDE :P), I’m interested to know what elements of Dolphin > dialect you find “beautiful”, “enjoyable” and productive. > What it is? > > - the MVP? > - integration with Windows? The way this integration is done? (If so… how is > it done?) > … > > I am very interested on knowing this with some detail level. That doesn’t > mean I will react and do something, but I want to have a better understanding > and put it in my radar to take inspiration to enhance the Pharo experience :P
