ben-coman

6 ms·

1.
by ben-coman 4y ago
Watching from afar the great advances in machine learning over the past few years with AlphaZero, GPT3, DALLE2 I felt it important for me to start understanding what is going on under the hood. Having just completed the private pre-release
2.
by ben-coman 8y ago
correct. that is the entire syntax.
3.
by ben-coman 8y ago
The traditional problem embedding is that the VM did a lot of window configuration before the image started. This has all been stripped out of the "minheadless" builds, which have defined a "virtual machine interface" u
4.
by ben-coman 8y ago
https://pharo.org was down. Its now back.
5.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Squeak is directly descended from ST-80. Ten years ago Pharo forked from Squeak due to conflict around adding features outside the ANSI standard. Pharo wanted to distinguish itself from Smalltalk to avoid constraint by the standard so minim
6.
by ben-coman 8y ago
> are these standalone binaries or can I create libraries or code which play well with other languages and systems? Traditionally Pharo could only create standalone applications, but the minheadless builds are making good progress on
7.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Pharo does have commandline functionality, but that won't demonstrate its value as a first experience. For an interactive tutorial... open Pharo, then left-click background, Tools > Playground, type & highlight 'ProStef go&
8.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Thanks for your feedback. Maybe it would be better to show the three tools in separate screen shots rather than overlapping. One aspect of simplicity is its minimal syntax... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pharo_syn
9.
by ben-coman 8y ago
There is steadily growing industry backing for Pharo formalised in the Pharo Consortium - companies putting hard cash on the line to support its open source development. http://consortium.pharo.org/web
10.
by ben-coman 8y ago
I haven't yet. Plan to soon. Here is a demo... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezfjditHjq4&t=344s
11.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Mostly consider it a programming language and deeply integrated development environment. However its a flavor of Smalltalk which ran as the operating system on mini-computers circa 1980s. Pharo retains some of that influence. For example
12.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Here is an example of Pharo style TDD.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuZyOKa91o
13.
by ben-coman 8y ago
There is... https://github.com/unchartedworks/SmalltalkVimMode I haven't used it, so YMMV.
14.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Pharo is making some moves in this direction with: * the CI first bootstrapping a non-GUI image as a separate artifact prior to loading the GUI and IDE into the release product. * good progress on stripping graphical elements out of the VM
15.
by ben-coman 8y ago
I guess he is referring to the criticisms by martin-t.
16.
by ben-coman 8y ago
I'm double posting since I think its important to rebut with some background around this criticism. I can understand being bitter from bleeding edge subsystems being used for a class, but the content seems to have been decided by the
17.
by ben-coman 8y ago
I think non-programmers probably learn Smalltalk easier, assuming its natural. Long time programmers maybe have the frustration of unlearning habits. "The only languages worth learning are those that change the way you think about pro
18.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Many people find that about the depths of Morphic. It has high technical which Pharo is addressing by creating a new system Bloc (its getting close, but not there yet). Then Morphic will be deprecated.
19.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Gilad Bracha (co-author of the Java Language Specification) on "#become:" in Smalltalk ( https://gbracha.blogspot.com.au/2009/07/miracle-of-become.ht... ) btw, see the section here on "Blub Paradox&qu
20.
by ben-coman 8y ago
I'm not familiar with these. Are the properties and methods that dynamically add visible in the code editor? It seems C# work by subclassing the DynamicObject class. What about dynamically extending all the other existing C# classes?
21.
by ben-coman 8y ago
They only have on app because Smalltalk if agile enough they build everything they need into it as the need arises - and this has been maintained over many years.
22.
by ben-coman 8y ago
I guess it depends on the taste of the developer. I really enjoy seeing newcomers posting in the mail list saying that Pharo makes "programming fun again". But Pharo is all about the deep integration of the tooling . Its what f
23.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Yes, Juan and community have done a good job with Cuis. Cuis is a fork of Squeak same as Pharo, and all three use the same OpenSmalltalk-VM. Both forks arose to deal with a large technical debt in different ways. Cuis has been paring back
24.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Martin, IIUC you are a student that suffered a class using bleeding edge features. I can understand why you are bitter, but you should not be so quick to disparage Mr Ducasse. Your faculty was his client, and it seems that circumstance wa
25.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Its a recurring fee. Of course, its dependent on members feeling they are getting value for money and continuing each year. The platinum level was only recently created. I don't know what it means that there is not later reports. The
26.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Gemstone is not "using" Smalltalk. Gemstone "is-a" Smalltalk. Here are commercial companies that believe in Pharo (in the money on the table way of measuring belief) http://consortium.pharo.org/
27.
by ben-coman 8y ago
Rubyists might know of Ruby books written by Avdi Grimm, who recorded his early experience with Pharo... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuZyOKa91o
28.
by ben-coman 8y ago
From your "learning experience report"(Dec 2017) linked further down I see that two of your main gripes relate to Bloc and Iceberg(Git). * Bloc is not a "Released" subsystem. While its development group report Bloc is s
29.
by ben-coman 9y ago
Coincidentally I just bumped into this... "The Value of Smalltalk: valuing and risk management in VisualWorks and GemStone" http://www.esug.org/data/ESUG2004/ValueOfSmalltalk.pdf
30.
by ben-coman 9y ago
Actually I was surprised to see JP Morgan there. I don't watch it closely but they seem a recent addition. Their "Kapital" system is based on Cincom Smalltalk. I wouldn't speculate they are porting it. Facilitating a v

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