I am a blender developer , using python to make blender addons. My latest complete one is Gyes and Random Material and Texture Generator. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/System/Gyes
Since I was a child I was dreaming of making a system that would use GUIs like the one that I saw in many spaceship movies, fluid futuristic GUIs that could issue way more complex commands than our modern window type GUIs. It was a childs dream, filed as too ambitious and stored there with the rest of too far fetched child dreams. And it was early this year that I was introduced to Smalltalk. I really like python but it was obvious to me that I needed something a lot more. It was that itch I had to scratch. I was very impressed with morphic and squeak and the whole enviroment and of course pharo. I was looking for a live coding enviroment with an ephasis on visual side and I think smalltalk fit like a glove for me. Morphic fit exactly my lego brick logic, I am a very synthetic person I like to keep things minimal and simple and synthesize complex structures out of them. Its a workflow I follow with my entire life not just coding. So I started a thread in Blenderartists forum ( http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?250375-A-Visual-Programming-Language-and-a-new-GUI-for-Blender-your-thoughts ) about how people saw the possibility of implementing a visual programming enviroment for blender with a very flexible GUI. I thought it would be one of those threads that none really cared and people would say "we have python why bother with a visual coding enviroment at all, python is very easy to learn" or "why should I care about coding at all I am merely a user". And of course I had such reactions but to my surprise the thread just went viral and people seems very excited with the ideas of Ephestos. So we sat down with another developer using Morphic code from a smalltalk coder , that he made for python and pygame and we tried to port to Blender libraries instead. Code wise it went much better in our side , suprisingly enough both he and found Morphic very easy to understand. But we came across some severe bugs and limitations at blender side that make it evident that if I wanted to keep this in python I had to dirty my hands with some C and diving inside Blender source. It also became more and more evident that squeak and pharo already implemented many of the ideas I had for Ephestos, and there was no way I could port all the features both offered to python just me and another coder in our free time. So I did the logical thing. Droped the idea of keeping the project pure python and now I have slowly started to porting it to Squeak/Pharo and I am using sockets to communicate with blender. The goal is of course Visual Coding together with several other ideas I have for RAD. Its not something bound by goals but more an exploration of potential. If the project progress well, I think it will be a win for both blender and squeak/pharo. At one side Blender developer will be exposed to the true power and flexibility of smalltalk, at the other hand the smalltalk community will have access to such a powerful amazing 3d application as blender. So I think it will be a double win. My preference towards pharo has to do with Nativeboost , I think that it may play an important role in the future and of course there are libraries like Athens that I would love to explore but ideally I would like to make Ephestos compatible with both squeak and pharo. In essense squeak and pharo have been an inspiration for Ephestos and the true driving force for making it reality and I can see myself making Ephestos a life project because Its just pure fun for me working on something like that. ________________________________ From: Sebastian Sastre <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, 17 October 2012, 14:43 Subject: [Pharo-project] what is your pharo story? Hey there, I'm collecting some stories from smalltalkers to tell people how exciting this is. Have something to share? What's your story with it? What got you excited? why it worked for you? sebastian o/ pd: I'm going to mention mainly about pharo and amber
