[Article] Elegant Pharo Code

Hi Hernán,

On 09 Jul 2014, at 09:11, Hernán Morales Durand <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hello Sven,
>
> I will try to give some feedback for you.

It is good to talk about the contents, the essence.

> My major issue is that the objects you use are pretty basic. There is no reason to put limits with so many contributed packages.

Well, I tried to stick with stock Pharo (except for the very last example that needs JSON parsing). Yes, some examples make little sense, but they each do show something powerful, something that is missing in many languages.

I was kind of hoping to get some discussion going with people submitting their favourites/alternatives, so that the list of examples could be improved/extended. But I am a hard judge ;-)

> Visualizations have impact and you could use Roassal, GraphViz, CodeCity, GraphET. SQL is also of interest for many developers. Or Big Data which is a requirement now. An example with Spec and DynamicLayout would be cool. For reverse engineering there is Moose and you could show an overview pyramid maybe? A one-liner with #linesOfCode would be magic :)

Like others said, there could/should be other articles doing something similar (giving a couple of cool examples as an overview/introduction), focused on the areas/libraries/frameworks you mention. Please feel inspired.

> About the article: When writing sample code with random, don't forget to add a paragraph explaining the random source. It is /dev/urandom? To randomize a String I write this:
>
> (UUID new asString reject: #isDigit) copyWithoutAll: '-'.

Talking about the random source would lead a bit far, no ?
I don't like your random string example, it is too contrived.
The one I used is not perfect either, I would probably write it myself as

String
  new: 256
  streamContents: [ :string |
    256 timesRepeat: [ string nextPut: 'abcdef' atRandom ]  ].

But having to write 256 twice is not cool, hence the my other choice.

> To count digits (doesn't work for 1 digit but I like it):
>
> 42 factorial log ceiling.

That is cool indeed.

What I wanted to show is that, not only are Pharo numbers real objects that can be mixed freely, without thinking about them, but that they are more than that: real normal objects that you can add lots of useful methods too.

> I don't know how this could be useful besides doing many things: "Split a string on dashes, reverse the order of the elements and join them using slashes". If you could find a example with some real application would be nice too.

Yes indeed, it does not make enough sense. Any ideas ?

> For Collection messages people is often interested in speed comparisons. Because audience already knows how to do that in R, Python or other language.

Speed is not the subject of the article. Sure, some operations can certainly be done in some other languages but certainly not in all of them, out of the box. I would really like to see the standard deviation one (17) done in other languages, for example.

> Hope you could find them useful.

Yes ;-)

Sven

> Hernán
>
>
>
>
> 2014-07-07 19:21 GMT-03:00 Sven Van Caekenberghe <[hidden email]>:
> Hi,
>
> I have written a new article presenting Pharo using a list of 23 short examples.
>
>   Elegant Pharo Code
>
>   Beautiful & Powerful One-liners, Expressions and Snippets
>
>   https://medium.com/@svenvc/elegant-pharo-code-bb590f0856d0
>
> As mentioned at the end of the article, I welcome feedback, remarks, comments, alternative solutions and other examples. The idea is to create yet another way to lure people into exploring Pharo while explaining by example why we like Pharo.
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Sven
>
> --
> Sven Van Caekenberghe
> Proudly supporting Pharo
> http://pharo.org
> http://association.pharo.org
> http://consortium.pharo.org
>
>
>
>
>
>

> I don't know how this could be useful besides doing many things: "Split a string on dashes, reverse the order of the elements and join them using slashes". If you could find a example with some real application would be nice too.

Yes indeed, it does not make enough sense. Any ideas ?