New Pharo based solution in the wild

Hi all,

After one year of negotiations (demos, quotes, etc.) and a couple of
months of development, by the end of December we released a pilot
version of our pharo based solution.
The solution consists of a native mobile app (Android), with Pharo 2.0
servers, using Seaside for the web UI, Seaside-REST for the mobile app
API and Zinc Websockets to certain "live" features of the web. The
persistence is GLORP using the native PostgreSQL driver.

I can't disclose much more about the customer or the solution yet, it
is a private solution for a multinational consumer goods company
operating in Argentina.

But I can comment on the numbers:
* The pilot will end in ~40 days
* It involves 50 mobile users of the Android app using it daily.
* An nginx frontend for static files and http proxying to the pharo app servers
* Two pharo images as servers, one for the web interface, and one for
the REST API. The image is the same, they work as two separate app
servers to make use of each server and for improved reliability (I
don't want the seaside failures, which has been none yet, to affect
the REST API).
* Everything running in DigitalOcean droplets based in NYC (they add
~180ms of latency from here but their price/value equations is
unmatched).

Some performance numbers:
* The Pharo server uptime has been no less than perfect, the first 10
days with uninterrupted uptime. Only shutdown to upgrade the image
(yesterday night).
* The load is minor, with peaks of ~30 concurrent mobile users during
a few "business" moments of the day, the server never passed 15% of
CPU use. The disk I/O is also small, but the database is small too
(growing daily).

If the pilot succeeds the plan is to extend the user base to ~1000
mobile users. But some water must pass under the bridge before
thinking of that. And if it ever happens, it is going to be gradual.

Some anecdotal info
I quit my Smalltalk full time job at InfOil (after 9 years of
employment) to dedicate 100% to my new company. So I'm betting big on
this. By now I'm the sole Smalltalk developer (devops?) of the
company. Time has never been more scarce than nowadays.

Why Pharo?
* Because it is the best open source Smalltalk ("inspired") out there.
* Because I have 10+ years of experience with Smalltalk I can't throw
away in the context of rapid prototyping and business domain modelling
(emphasis on this).
* It was a key advantage during the negotiations, we could show a
wireframed live app even before our competition prepared a PowerPoint
presentation.

The development process with Pharo has been rudimentary, only
Monticello packages and a couple of workspace scripts to provision new
images.
I still can't get my head around Metacello. But honestly I haven't
dedicated as much time as it needs to be learnt. Having used VAST
ENVY's ConfigurationMaps successfully in the past is a proof I can
learn Metacello.

During the last years at InfOil we were using git with Dolphin
Smalltalk, with CI after every git push to the main repo. This was
also linked with our issue tracking system, in order to know in which
build a certain issue was fixed. We used Dolphin's PAX's files (CVS
friendly), Gitlab, JetBrain's TeamCity and YouTrack
I'd like to do the same using Monticello's FileTree, BitBucket and
JIRA (CI server to be defined).

Hopefully with some time, I'll be able to dive deeper into this.
My learning of Pharo tooling hasn't been straightforward, but maybe
because I'm old and spoiled with other Smalltalk dialects (VSE, VAST,
Dolphin).
I was managing the Android code (java) with git branching and merging
way before I learnt how to use Monticello. Managing the code (files)
was the only advantage of working with Eclipse/Java. Everything else
was a burden compared with Pharo.

I wanted to share my experiences through a blog, but haven't had time
to set it up as I'd like, and by now this email is going to be all I
can share. After the pilot, we can talk about reporting a success
story for Pharo. I felt like this during the last week:
http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/68251866244/successful-deployment-at-last


Best regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo
CTO (aka DevOps), http://trentosur.com

Hi all,

I'm bumping this thread with sad news.

Unfortunately this solution was decommissioned more than two months ago, after more than one and a half year of perfect uptime and no technical nor user-requested features shortcomings.

The reasons given weren't technical, it had more to do with a change of our customer's top manager, who also was it's internal sponsor. The new management "inherited" this ongoing project which wasn't fully deployed at that moment, and their stance regarding it wasn't as proactive as with the previous one. That plus the local economic woes during the last years created the ideal scenario for a budget cut that let us hanging.

Had the project been fully deployed earlier, I guess the story would have been different. Also we heard that the new manager tried to replace our solution with one that "he brought" without success until now.

I'm sharing this with you in order to update the Success section of Pharo's website. We still have the other small project, but it's future doesn't look promising either, the current context for it is similar with the added decline of sales (it's a mobile sales app).

Regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo

ps: On the personal level these bad news were overly compensated with the birth of my first daughter two months ago. :)

2014-01-04 18:33 GMT-03:00 Sven Van Caekenberghe <[hidden email]>:

Great, impressive work, Esteban, thanks for sharing.

I wish you luck in completing your pilot.

Let us known if you need help in critical areas.

Sven

On 04 Jan 2014, at 20:16, Esteban A. Maringolo <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> After one year of negotiations (demos, quotes, etc.) and a couple of
> months of development, by the end of December we released a pilot
> version of our pharo based solution.
> The solution consists of a native mobile app (Android), with Pharo 2.0
> servers, using Seaside for the web UI, Seaside-REST for the mobile app
> API and Zinc Websockets to certain "live" features of the web. The
> persistence is GLORP using the native PostgreSQL driver.
>
> I can't disclose much more about the customer or the solution yet, it
> is a private solution for a multinational consumer goods company
> operating in Argentina.
>
> But I can comment on the numbers:
> * The pilot will end in ~40 days
> * It involves 50 mobile users of the Android app using it daily.
> * An nginx frontend for static files and http proxying to the pharo app servers
> * Two pharo images as servers, one for the web interface, and one for
> the REST API. The image is the same, they work as two separate app
> servers to make use of each server and for improved reliability (I
> don't want the seaside failures, which has been none yet, to affect
> the REST API).
> * Everything running in DigitalOcean droplets based in NYC (they add
> ~180ms of latency from here but their price/value equations is
> unmatched).
>
> Some performance numbers:
> * The Pharo server uptime has been no less than perfect, the first 10
> days with uninterrupted uptime. Only shutdown to upgrade the image
> (yesterday night).
> * The load is minor, with peaks of ~30 concurrent mobile users during
> a few "business" moments of the day, the server never passed 15% of
> CPU use. The disk I/O is also small, but the database is small too
> (growing daily).
>
> If the pilot succeeds the plan is to extend the user base to ~1000
> mobile users. But some water must pass under the bridge before
> thinking of that. And if it ever happens, it is going to be gradual.
>
> Some anecdotal info
> I quit my Smalltalk full time job at InfOil (after 9 years of
> employment) to dedicate 100% to my new company. So I'm betting big on
> this. By now I'm the sole Smalltalk developer (devops?) of the
> company. Time has never been more scarce than nowadays.
>
> Why Pharo?
> * Because it is the best open source Smalltalk ("inspired") out there.
> * Because I have 10+ years of experience with Smalltalk I can't throw
> away in the context of rapid prototyping and business domain modelling
> (emphasis on this).
> * It was a key advantage during the negotiations, we could show a
> wireframed live app even before our competition prepared a PowerPoint
> presentation.
>
> The development process with Pharo has been rudimentary, only
> Monticello packages and a couple of workspace scripts to provision new
> images.
> I still can't get my head around Metacello. But honestly I haven't
> dedicated as much time as it needs to be learnt. Having used VAST
> ENVY's ConfigurationMaps successfully in the past is a proof I can
> learn Metacello.
>
> During the last years at InfOil we were using git with Dolphin
> Smalltalk, with CI after every git push to the main repo. This was
> also linked with our issue tracking system, in order to know in which
> build a certain issue was fixed. We used Dolphin's PAX's files (CVS
> friendly), Gitlab, JetBrain's TeamCity and YouTrack
> I'd like to do the same using Monticello's FileTree, BitBucket and
> JIRA (CI server to be defined).
>
> Hopefully with some time, I'll be able to dive deeper into this.
> My learning of Pharo tooling hasn't been straightforward, but maybe
> because I'm old and spoiled with other Smalltalk dialects (VSE, VAST,
> Dolphin).
> I was managing the Android code (java) with git branching and merging
> way before I learnt how to use Monticello. Managing the code (files)
> was the only advantage of working with Eclipse/Java. Everything else
> was a burden compared with Pharo.
>
> I wanted to share my experiences through a blog, but haven't had time
> to set it up as I'd like, and by now this email is going to be all I
> can share. After the pilot, we can talk about reporting a success
> story for Pharo. I felt like this during the last week:
> http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/68251866244/successful-deployment-at-last
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Esteban A. Maringolo
> CTO (aka DevOps), http://trentosur.com
>