Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[gettimothy via Pharo-users]

--- Begin Message ---
Hi

I concur on the documentation problem.

I concur that there is plenty of documentation, but finding it is a chore.

I have two side projects I have started.
Doc at http://www.squeaksource.com/@FICALqrUmxQTIHgr/ul4_-exCAnd SeasideDoc 
(which I started before Doc)  
http://www.squeaksource.com/@FICALqrUmxQTIHgr/zwF3AJHc

I expect that I will develop Doc completely before refactoring SeasideDoc to 
sit on top of it.

The core ideas are:

1. That documentation should be available in-image in familiar terms--by 
sending messages to "stuff"
2. The documentation should be VERY EASY to add to (unlike the HelpBrowser, 
which ,imho, is coding, not documenting).
3. StackExchange style commenting with upvotes, priority.
4. Doc saves to a normal repository squeaksource or however pharo does its 
stuff, and hence, evolves with the image.
5. ?? this one is a stickler. should documentation be tightly bound with the 
Objects per Class comment style? or should it exist symbiotically? I think the 
latter. If so, what is the best design pattern(s) to facilitate that.


Regarding 1. ..by sending messages to "stuff"

stuff is..

 classes:   Dictionary doc   
packages: PG3 doc
frameworks: Seaside doc
                   XTreams doc
Design Patterns:  Singleton doc
                           Facade doc
                            BigBallOfMud doc  (j.k.)

I think typical Gnu-Linux style "man" , "help" , "info" or "verbose" would be 
an incredibly useful tool in bridging the "how do I do foo" gap that Squeak 
certaintly has and I suspect Pharo does too.


I am very busy with a PEG grammar development project, so this is back burner 
stuff for me.

I post this in the hope that some guru will take over the project and make 
Pharo/Squeak/ (and other) Smalltalks the BEST documented systems on the 
internet.

Cheers.

tty





 On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 10:08:29 -0400 Tomaž Turk 
 wrote 



Dear all,



This thread is a bit old, but anyways: here are my two cents on the question 
'What are reasons not to use Smalltalk'. Thanks, Horrido, to constantly promote 
these kind of discussions.



I think that your polls are mixing very different reasons - for instance, we 
choose development tools in different settings: as a group, as a firm, as an 
individual -- and for different purposes - for one of the projects, for some 
projects, as a general orientation of a firm, a specific team, or an 
individual. So I don't respond to these polls since it would be hard to answer 
properly, and "all of the above" is probably useless to you.



What struck me about Pharo is the beauty and simplicity of the language and 
environment - and its great community, of course! Despite the fact that I have 
to use other tools because of my habits, environment, colleagues, students, and 
customers, I keep running Pharo almost every day, testing the ideas - it became 
a habit. I think that the consortium is well aware of the important things to 
make Pharo a feasible toolset for serious development, like stability, the 
proper GUI support, and books. 



In my own experience, Pharo as a language is pretty mature. In every-day 
situation with Pharo I deal with small challenges like remembering how to 
change all spaces with hyphens in a String - as I do in other languages when I 
try to remember all the methods that are already made for me in a certain 
language/libraries. This is not a problem.



The real challenge is somewhere else: it's the comprehension of all the 
packages that are needed for a full-size project, from persistence to GUI. When 
documentation is scarce you have to go more or less deep into the code which I 
often find quite challenging. Besides commentaries, it helps tremendously if 
developers would always use typed variables to indicate API, like



properties: aDictionary



or



presentWith: aWAPresenter



instead of 



properties: someProperties



and



presentWith: anObject



It's true that Pharo is not among "strongly typed" languages, however we 
sometimes forget that typing is not just a technical thing to avoid run-time 
errors, but it also gives information to other developers what's going on in 
the code and who should be the receiver.



In some packages I also miss the use of superclasses - you can see that a bunch 
of classes directly inherits from Object or some other general class, however 
they could be organized in a better inheritance hierarchies, thus additionaly 
explaining their common and individual behaviour. 



Both and many other concepts are nicely described in books Learning OOP and 
Pharo with Style. I know that we are always eager to develop the package and 
satisfied when it works - and then it's hard to find the time to tie up these 
little pieces. I hope I don't sound too patronizing - I'm the same myself.



Years ago Borland made a breakthrough with Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. For both 
tools they prepared two sets of books: user manual and 

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Tomaž Turk]

Dear all,

This thread is a bit old, but anyways: here are my two cents on the 
question 'What are reasons not to use Smalltalk'. Thanks, Horrido, to 
constantly promote these kind of discussions.


I think that your polls are mixing very different reasons - for 
instance, we choose development tools in different settings: as a group, 
as a firm, as an individual -- and for different purposes - for one of 
the projects, for some projects, as a general orientation of a firm, a 
specific team, or an individual. So I don't respond to these polls since 
it would be hard to answer properly, and "all of the above" is probably 
useless to you.


What struck me about Pharo is the beauty and simplicity of the language 
and environment - and its great community, of course! Despite the fact 
that I have to use other tools because of my habits, environment, 
colleagues, students, and customers, I keep running Pharo almost every 
day, testing the ideas - it became a habit. I think that the consortium 
is well aware of the important things to make Pharo a feasible toolset 
for serious development, like stability, the proper GUI support, and 
books.


In my own experience, Pharo as a language is pretty mature. In every-day 
situation with Pharo I deal with small challenges like remembering how 
to change all spaces with hyphens in a String - as I do in other 
languages when I try to remember all the methods that are already made 
for me in a certain language/libraries. This is not a problem.


The real challenge is somewhere else: it's the comprehension of all the 
packages that are needed for a full-size project, from persistence to 
GUI. When documentation is scarce you have to go more or less deep into 
the code which I often find quite challenging. Besides commentaries, it 
helps tremendously if developers would always use typed variables to 
indicate API, like


properties: aDictionary

or

presentWith: aWAPresenter

instead of

properties: someProperties

and

presentWith: anObject

It's true that Pharo is not among "strongly typed" languages, however we 
sometimes forget that typing is not just a technical thing to avoid 
run-time errors, but it also gives information to other developers 
what's going on in the code and who should be the receiver.


In some packages I also miss the use of superclasses - you can see that 
a bunch of classes directly inherits from Object or some other general 
class, however they could be organized in a better inheritance 
hierarchies, thus additionaly explaining their common and individual 
behaviour.


Both and many other concepts are nicely described in books Learning OOP 
and Pharo with Style. I know that we are always eager to develop the 
package and satisfied when it works - and then it's hard to find the 
time to tie up these little pieces. I hope I don't sound too patronizing 
- I'm the same myself.


Years ago Borland made a breakthrough with Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. For 
both tools they prepared two sets of books: user manual and reference 
manual. Books about Pharo are very nice and helpful, they are user 
manuals. If all the crucial packages would respect typed variables and 
class hierarchies, we won't need reference manuals at all :-)


So, yeah, I think that the tipping point for Pharo is the question of 
how much time a developer should use to rediscover the behaviour which 
is already there.


Best wishes
Tomaz

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

Ummm... this is another poll that doesn't render well on Brave or
Firefox. I can't even see the options. I wonder if there is not any more
estandar cross-browser way of conducting these polls.

Cheers,

Offray

On 19/06/20 11:31 a. m., Richard Kenneth Eng wrote:
> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/ 
>
> Thanks for participating in the poll. 

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Vitor Medina Cruz]

+1

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 3:09 PM Todd Blanchard via Pharo-users <
pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> wrote:

> Same.  My biggest hesitation is lack of cloud deployment support.  At
> least for web apps.
>
> For desktop apps, I have been holding off building any UI because of the
> brik blok spec spec2 churn.
>
> On Jun 19, 2020, at 10:02 AM, Richard Sargent <
> richard.sarg...@gemtalksystems.com> wrote:
>
> It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my
> answer.
>
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng <
> horrido.hobb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>>
>>
>> Thanks for participating in the poll.
>>
>
>

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Stéphane Ducasse]

A little point in the discussion. 
If you do not contribute then there is less chance that the situation will 
improve. 

Look at Sven, he is running a business for real.
Still he develops and documents and shares with all of you
Zinc
Neo suite
Chapter and script on deployment. 

So yes we do not have one click solutions but we are not millions of people. 
Still some people do successfully deploy Pharo app and automate it. 

Now about JS framework. We stopped maintaining some JS app just because 
everything was
moving under our feets even the package manager. 
In a project to migrate from GWT to Angular the angular versions changed in the 
curse of the project.

So at the end of the day when you think about what you have done, you can also 
think 
about what you have done for improving the ecosystem. 

Because if you only count on other work then complain.

S. 

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[horrido]

I decided to add a new option: "None of the above (add a comment for a new
answer)."

Hopefully, this fixes the issue.



Richard Sargent wrote
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:39 AM horrido 

> horrido.hobbies@

>  wrote:
> 
>> I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you tried to submit "Vote"
>> without
>> checking off any of the boxes?
>>
> 
> Yes, that is what I am saying. None of those are reasons to NOT use
> Smalltalk, in my opinion.
> 
> 
>> You can always add comment to the post.
>>
>>
>>
>> Richard Sargent wrote
>> > It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were
>> my
>> > answer.
>> >
>> > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng <
>>
>> > horrido.hobbies@
>>
>> >> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thanks for participating in the poll.
>> >>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
>>
>>





--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[horrido]

That's a limitation of the WordPress poll. It doesn't really allow you to add
additional answers.

However, what you can do is go to "View Results", click on "Comments" at the
bottom of the poll widget, and add a comment, which can include a new
answer. It's not ideal, but that's all Wordpress allows, I'm afraid.



Richard Sargent wrote
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:39 AM horrido 

> horrido.hobbies@

>  wrote:
> 
>> I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you tried to submit "Vote"
>> without
>> checking off any of the boxes?
>>
> 
> Yes, that is what I am saying. None of those are reasons to NOT use
> Smalltalk, in my opinion.
> 
> 
>> You can always add comment to the post.
>>
>>
>>
>> Richard Sargent wrote
>> > It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were
>> my
>> > answer.
>> >
>> > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng <
>>
>> > horrido.hobbies@
>>
>> >> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thanks for participating in the poll.
>> >>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
>>
>>





--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Russ Whaley]

Agreed. My biggest issues are non-multiplatform - development and
deployment (specifically iOS/mobile support -in a single downloadable IDE).
And while I love Pharo, and all the brilliant people who work very hard to
make it the best Smalltalk environment available... I shouldn’t have to
struggle for months trying to build a usable GUI front end. An LTS model
may go a long way in this area, or it could just keep all the cool stuff
from ever seeing the light of day.  :)

All that said, I have preferred Smalltalk since my earliest introductions
in the early Digitalk days. I went on to Java and C# - and I can easily
build UI’s and deploy multi-platform in these environments...

- but I really, REALLY like and prefer Smalltalk.

Cheers everyone!


On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:32 PM Richard Kenneth Eng <
horrido.hobb...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>
>
> Thanks for participating in the poll.
>
-- 
Russ Whaley
whaley.r...@gmail.com

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Todd Blanchard via Pharo-users]

--- Begin Message ---
HTML+CSS+JQuery has been stable for a long time.

That's pretty much what I use (plus the odd jquery widget like date picker).

Not keen on writing code I know will be obsolete next year was my primary point.

> On Jun 19, 2020, at 12:14 PM, Aliaksei Syrel  wrote:
> 
> Imagine trying to build any UI in javascript with their wide family of 
> frameworks ;)

--- End Message ---

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Todd Blanchard via Pharo-users]

--- Begin Message ---
It isn't plug and play.

For instance, I can pick PHP on an AWS elastic beanstalk menu, set up a couple 
shell scripts, and deploy PHP with 'eb deploy' out of my local git repo.  Easy.

It is possible to deploy the stuff but to build infrastructure and deployment 
scripts for a pharo seaside app, it is a lot more DIY work.

I don't always have time to do that.  I can get a box up,, sure.  Getting a 
fleet up with deployment automation and autoscaling is another can of worms.


> On Jun 19, 2020, at 12:18 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe  wrote:
> 
> If you are capable of deploying web applications, for any other technology 
> stack, there is really no issue in doing the same for Pharo.

--- End Message ---

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Esteban Maringolo]

In my case it didn't let me vote at all, it assumed I already voted.

I started a private tab, disabled tracking (it tracks a lot for a
single post), and then saw the options, and there wasn't a "none of
the above/other" kind of option.
So I didn't vote.

Esteban A. Maringolo

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 2:02 PM Richard Sargent
 wrote:
>
> It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my 
> answer.
>
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng 
>  wrote:
>>
>> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>>
>> Thanks for participating in the poll.

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Sven Van Caekenberghe]

Todd,

> On 19 Jun 2020, at 19:04, Todd Blanchard via Pharo-users 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Todd Blanchard 
> Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?
> Date: 19 June 2020 at 19:04:37 CEST
> To: Any question about pharo is welcome 
> 
> 
> Same.  My biggest hesitation is lack of cloud deployment support.  At least 
> for web apps.

If you are capable of deploying web applications, for any other technology 
stack, there is really no issue in doing the same for Pharo.

Sven

> For desktop apps, I have been holding off building any UI because of the brik 
> blok spec spec2 churn.
> 
>> On Jun 19, 2020, at 10:02 AM, Richard Sargent 
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my 
>> answer.
>> 
>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng 
>>  wrote:
>> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>>  
>> 
>> Thanks for participating in the poll. 
> 
> 
> 

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Aliaksei Syrel]

>
> For desktop apps, I have been holding off building any UI because of the
> brik blok spec spec2 churn.

Imagine trying to build any UI in javascript with their wide family of
frameworks ;)

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 at 20:40, Todd Blanchard via Pharo-users <
pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> wrote:

> Same.  My biggest hesitation is lack of cloud deployment support.  At
> least for web apps.
>
> For desktop apps, I have been holding off building any UI because of the
> brik blok spec spec2 churn.
>
> On Jun 19, 2020, at 10:02 AM, Richard Sargent <
> richard.sarg...@gemtalksystems.com> wrote:
>
> It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my
> answer.
>
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng <
> horrido.hobb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>>
>>
>> Thanks for participating in the poll.
>>
>
>

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Richard Sargent]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:39 AM horrido  wrote:

> I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you tried to submit "Vote"
> without
> checking off any of the boxes?
>

Yes, that is what I am saying. None of those are reasons to NOT use
Smalltalk, in my opinion.


> You can always add comment to the post.
>
>
>
> Richard Sargent wrote
> > It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my
> > answer.
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng <
>
> > horrido.hobbies@
>
> >> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks for participating in the poll.
> >>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
>
>

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[horrido]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you tried to submit "Vote" without
checking off any of the boxes?

You can always add comment to the post.



Richard Sargent wrote
> It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my
> answer.
> 
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng <

> horrido.hobbies@

>> wrote:
> 
>>
>> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>>
>>
>> Thanks for participating in the poll.
>>





--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Todd Blanchard via Pharo-users]

--- Begin Message ---
Same.  My biggest hesitation is lack of cloud deployment support.  At least for 
web apps.

For desktop apps, I have been holding off building any UI because of the brik 
blok spec spec2 churn.

> On Jun 19, 2020, at 10:02 AM, Richard Sargent 
>  wrote:
> 
> It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my 
> answer.
> 
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng 
> mailto:horrido.hobb...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/ 
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for participating in the poll. 

--- End Message ---

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Richard Sargent]

It wouldn't let me vote without choosing an answer, none of which were my
answer.

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:32 AM Richard Kenneth Eng <
horrido.hobb...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/
>
>
> Thanks for participating in the poll.
>

[Pharo-users] [ANN] What are reasons NOT to use Smalltalk?

[Richard Kenneth Eng]

https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/06/19/what-are-reasons-not-to-use-smalltalk/


Thanks for participating in the poll.