To come back to Juan's latest question, let me say:
I spent many months last year loading software development
environments for a variety of programming languages to see the state
of the world. And I found myself disappointed that we really haven't
bested smalltalk yet. Smalltalk is great, I just figured... something
better would have come along over the years. For ease of realizing a
design vision, and platform independence, it is hard to beat smalltalk.
I could not commit to VisualWorks because of the licensing terms, for
commercialize work. Dolphin is platform limited, and differs from the
other smalltalks. VisualAge is too pricey! [I tried the other flavors
too...] These are good tools, they just do not fit my requirements or
means. After digging around, I like the licensing terms of Pharo. It
is on the right track. It is rich in functionality. It works; it is
robust.
I am strictly a user right now, but I will try to contribute in the
future. I like Stef's idea of a "bounty" -- great idea!
So my advice for a free smalltalk is -- drumroll please... -- Pharo.
But don't ignore Squeak itself, nor the variants, depending on your
needs.
That said, the the lack of a GUI builder is a clear deficiency. But we
will add one. [Ahem... i sound like royalty with my use of the word
"we"; i co-authored one in C/X/motif in the 1980s... it should be at
least that simple in smalltalk. The aforementioned tool took two of us
about one week; but I know nothing about Morph at this time.]
Depending on your needs, simple GUI's are easy to build with Morph,
but sometimes (most?) i just want to paint the interface and give it
some thought before fully wiring it. It allows one to quickly probe
whether the vision(the GUI) is an acceptable/comfortable/
sufficient/... means for a user to interact with the application.
Especially when working with others programmers, and worse, those
pesky clients! Clients love interfaces.
(I still do not know what Polymorph is, is it a completely different
system? a piggy-back system? They can co-exist right? but they use a
different value-changed notification system?)
Pharo has value models, right? [Or am i... -- I'll look later.]
Again, thanks to the good work of the Pharo people (and Squeak
people), I have found some sanity in life. I got tired of Python
changing. I cannot stand strong typing. I love Smalltalk. And the best
part is that it's free!
Cheers,
Cam
PS: speed is another high-priority. VisualWorks and Dolphin feel
really snappy!
On Jun 19, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Steve Wirts wrote:
Value Models, TypeConverter library, SubCanvas support(super
powerful idea here), etc... some really wonderful idioms long lost
in OO guis.
VisualWorks had some really nice frameworks that were discarded due
to them being undervalued.
I hope to eventually re-introduce some of these fun frameworks into
pharo given my time constraints and interest from potential users.
see
http://c2.com/ppr/vmodels.html
Magritte seems like it might be a superior alternative to
VisualWorks ValueModels; I haven't explored it enough to really
know yet.
Pharo is the most exciting thing to come along for me in quite awhile!
On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Stéphane Ducasse <[email protected]
> wrote:
>
> I don't know what I am waiting for -- except more time -- because I
> guess I should build such a thing. (Are there any Pharo/squeak
coders
> available for part-time consulting over the next year? ...At student
> level pay I must add.)
>
> I too want a GUI builder.
me too :)
So may be we could have a kind of bounty system for pharo.
Frankly we are rather full and we (the core) have not that much time
for
extensions but we would support any work in the direction of
UIBuilder
TestServer
Package....
FileWrite-Rio kind of integration
Better MC support (yes I should look at MC1.5)
Better SUnit
Better tools (for example like the newInspector)
Stef
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