On 12-10-17 08:30, Markus Stumptner wrote:
Just to lead this back to the original question. What you say is undoubtedly true. It is not, however, necessarily something that a beginner will understand or be able to share in.
That is a very important point. It also explains a lot of why we are missing certain things that developers coming from other environments take for granted: they simply provide less value to experienced smalltalkers. And that is indeed a barrier to entry.
I remember sharply my first looking at squeak, and just not understanding how I could create a new class or method in a browser. Another was that I have been programming in seaside for a year without using senders and implementers. Pair programming for an hour with Philippe Marschall showed me so much invisible/hidden functionality.
Other (mainstream) environments don't provide the immediate feedback of navigating, inspecting and manipulating the whole environment, and therefore newcomers have no appropriate expectations (internal model), and are clueless on what they are able to do in Pharo. Combined with the lack of systematic visual clues and the high density of the class library that makes it not easy to learn.
Stephan
