Hi Bart, Thanks for the feedback. You make some good points.
If you want to help make Pharo better, please report bugs! Stability is important for us. That is why we have a 1.0 that is stabilizing, and a 1.1 alpha branch at the moment. We don't just commit everything into one trunk... After 1.0 is released, there will be maintenance updates for important fixes. Cheers Adrian On Dec 18, 2009, at 09:41 , Bart Gauquie wrote: > Dear all, > > I've been using Squeak before, now I'm using Pharo. Its still > 'hobby' usage. > However, on my firm, we have a lot of working groups in which we > investigate > new technologies. We mainly use Java / .Net. > I've initiated a working group around Smalltalk/Seaside. And chose > Pharo as > a smalltalk platform/dialect, mainly because its free and adaptable. > I'm a > fan of it, but my colleagues of it have some doubts about it. I know > that > its not finished yet, and that a lot of improvements are ongoing. > The main > 'complaint' about Pharo is that the environment is not stable. In a > lot of > the tools you get exceptions, errors, it breaks something, stuff > like that. > Thats a shame off course. I expect in an environment that everything > just > works. We are using Eclipse in our day to day work; nowadays, > Eclipse is > quite fast and is reliable. Pharo is more or less fast enough, but > still not > reliable. There are too much 'dead links', messageNotUnderStoods I > mean. For > instance on latests browse package is not working on the Class > Browser. On > the Pharo 1.0 branch, there are also dead links here and there. > > So therefore my question: I highly support that Pharo wants to > innovate ; > BUT as a developer I first expect that every tool works perfectly, > that I > can trust it. Furthermore, since Smalltalk environment is written in > itself, > I expect that every tool is also thoroughly unit tested to avoid > regression > on the tools. I don't know if it is possible to test the Morphic > windows in > Pharo. Rephrasing: I think we should focus a lot on making the current > system stable, and keeping it stable; and focus on fixing bugs asap > (and not > just quickly fixing the bug, first at least write a test for it). > All these > new stuff like NewCompiler, Settings, in the 1.1 are very valuable > stuff to > add; but we should really keep focusing on stability. I'm saying this > because, what I've noticed is that my colleagues are trying the other > smalltalks like Cincom; the only reason that that they are doing > this , is > because the environment is not stable enough: I suspect that a lot > of other > people are also doing this? > > I've noticed that there are quite some regression bugs (for instance: > http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=349); it worked in > version x > but now is not working anymore. If you have a lot of these, you lose > a lot > of time. I'd rather make one slow step forward, instead of rushing > forward > and having to back up. > > Furthermore I still had some other tools I found very useful in my > day to > day work that I'm missing in Pharo > - Proper keyboard shortcuts: see other thread, did not have time yet > to put > something on wiki > - History of a file: you can always check the local history of a file > (comparable with the versions of a message in Pharo), but you can in > the > same view also see the version of the file on the repository - > regardless > which versioning system you're using. And quickly open these versions, > select 2 of these versions and compare them with each other. This is > very > valuable tool if you're developing with a lot of people on the same > to see > every version created and quickly be able to compare them. Is there > such > functionality in Pharo ? > - ... > > Any thoughts on this? > > Kind Regards, > > Bart > > -- > imagination is more important than knowledge - Albert Einstein > Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere - > Albert Einstein > Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The > important thing > is not to stop questioning. - Albert Einstein > The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. - > Albert > Einstein > Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. - Albert > Einstein > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
