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Two Questions from a Newbie

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Ichiseki

Two Questions from a Newbie

Konnichiwa
First thanks to those that gave me some directions to start with Pharo / Smalltalk.
Now I have some questions that I'm sure are very stupid.
The first one is, is there a way to use the bouncing atoms and the lights on on Pharo 3? Because I tried to build it in there and it doesn't work
The second one is why there are like three different smalltalk environments? Pharo Squeek and Cuis? What are the differences? Is there a standard? I find this extremelly intriguing as it seems like there is a lot of dupplicate effort?
The third one is which is the line between the core language and frameworks and libraries in Pharo?
I found that, for instance Cuis has something like a basic image and some external frameworks, pharo has some internal frameworks and lots of externals. This is weird from someone comming from other languages.
The fourth is I found that documentation is very, very scarce especially for some frameworks. This is also a major drawback for a newcomer to pharo. A very thick entry barrier.

Thank you
Ichiro

stepharo

Re: Two Questions from a Newbie

On 7/8/14 21:56, Ichiseki wrote:
> Konnichiwa
> First thanks to those that gave me some directions to start with Pharo /
> Smalltalk.
Welcome!!!
> Now I have some questions that I'm sure are very stupid.
There are no stupid questions :) Feel free to ask any questions you want.

> The first one is, is there a way to use the bouncing atoms and the lights on
> on Pharo 3?
LightOn should work as described step by step in the Pharo by example book.
What is not working. Do you have the code somewhere?

> Because I tried to build it in there and it doesn't work
> The second one is why there are like three different smalltalk environments?
> Pharo Squeek and Cuis? What are the differences? Is there a standard?
No
> I find
> this extremelly intriguing as it seems like there is a lot of dupplicate
> effort?

Indeed we created Pharo when we could not change anything in Squeak (and
it was a hard decision) and after Squeak started to move a bit.
Cuis is the work on Juan Vuletich.

The goal of Pharo is to rethink Smalltalk and create a language inspired
by Smalltalk but not bound to it.
The goal of Pharo is also to make sure people can make money with it.
> The third one is which is the line between the core language and frameworks
> and libraries in Pharo?
Usually frameworks are loaded on top. Now the core is what is needed.

> I found that, for instance Cuis has something like a basic image and some
> external frameworks, pharo has some internal frameworks and lots of
> externals.
Pharo has a "minimal" image, and framework loaded and libraries that you
can load.
We are in the process to have a really modular system and one of our
goal is to be able to create minimal images
from scratch and create different images based on what people need. Now
this is not easy to manage because if you get a fix for
one part how do you propagate it to the other users. But we are getting
there.
> This is weird from someone comming from other languages.
Why Java has a core and libraries too and we are getting there too.
For Pharo we are about to bootstrap a kernel (get a textual description
and a process and create core containing small working core).
> The fourth is I found that documentation is very, very scarce especially for
> some frameworks.
Like what?

> This is also a major drawback for a newcomer to pharo. A
> very thick entry barrier.
Yes we know it and I'm sad as you but you know if people building
frameworks do not document them then it is more difficult for other to
do it.
Did you check Pharo for the Entreprise because we are writing many
chapters on frameworks.
https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/job/PharoForTheEnterprise/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/

>
> Thank you
> Ichiro
>
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Two-Questions-from-a-Newbie-tp4772384.html
> Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>

kilon.alios

Re: Two Questions from a Newbie

In reply to this post by Ichiseki

Fortunately Smalltalk is a never ending journey into the land of weirdness and Pharo is its champion. Pharo is by far the most actively developed open source Smalltalk out there. Most likely more actively developed than the commercial ones too. So the overlap is pretty minimum actually.

Smalltalk is not a programming language. Its a live coding environment that has also a very minimalistic language. Yeap documentation is a big problem in Pharo. I was complaining about it a few days ago. However people here are very helpful and very friendly to newcomers (unlike other programming languages ) and stackoverflow questions never go unanswered so you are not alone and people can help a lot. So its not that bad. Also there is already a lot of documentation about Pharo. Pharo for The Enterprise , Pharo By Example and Deep Into Pharo should keep you occupied for months if not years.

As a newcomer its important to keep an open mind, Pharo is actually easy to learn but unlike other programming languages is not the same thing repackaged diffirently . Its quite diffirent actually and I think that is what makes it so productive and fun.

In any case the secret of learning is very simple ... ask and you shall receive ;)

Oh and welcome to Pharo .And remember if you are not having fun then its a Pharo bug and you should report it ;D

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Ichiseki <[hidden email]> wrote:

Konnichiwa
First thanks to those that gave me some directions to start with Pharo /
Smalltalk.
Now I have some questions that I'm sure are very stupid.
The first one is, is there a way to use the bouncing atoms and the lights on
on Pharo 3? Because I tried to build it in there and it doesn't work
The second one is why there are like three different smalltalk environments?
Pharo Squeek and Cuis? What are the differences? Is there a standard? I find
this extremelly intriguing as it seems like there is a lot of dupplicate
effort?
The third one is which is the line between the core language and frameworks
and libraries in Pharo?
I found that, for instance Cuis has something like a basic image and some
external frameworks, pharo has some internal frameworks and lots of
externals. This is weird from someone comming from other languages.
The fourth is I found that documentation is very, very scarce especially for
some frameworks. This is also a major drawback for a newcomer to pharo. A
very thick entry barrier.

Thank you
Ichiro

--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Two-Questions-from-a-Newbie-tp4772384.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

HilaireFernandes

Re: Two Questions from a Newbie

In reply to this post by stepharo

Le 08/08/2014 04:31, stepharo a écrit :
>> This is also a major drawback for a newcomer to pharo. A
>> very thick entry barrier.
> Yes we know it and I'm sad as you but you know if people building
> frameworks do not document them then it is more difficult for other to
> do it.
> Did you check Pharo for the Entreprise because we are writing many
> chapters on frameworks.
> https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/job/PharoForTheEnterprise/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/
>

Steph, may be you could mention Pillar this new interesting way of
documentation online about Pharo core and external package. Hope I
understood correctly what is Pillar.

Hilaire

--
Dr. Geo - http://drgeo.eu
iStoa - http://istao.drgeo.eu

http://drgeo.eu

Ben Coman

Re: Two Questions from a Newbie

In reply to this post by kilon.alios

kilon alios wrote:

Fortunately Smalltalk is a never ending journey into the land of weirdness and Pharo is its champion. Pharo is by far the most actively developed open source Smalltalk out there. Most likely more actively developed than the commercial ones too. So the overlap is pretty minimum actually.

Smalltalk is not a programming language. Its a live coding environment that has also a very minimalistic language. Yeap documentation is a big problem in Pharo. I was complaining about it a few days ago. However people here are very helpful and very friendly to newcomers (unlike other programming languages ) and stackoverflow questions never go unanswered so you are not alone and people can help a lot. So its not that bad. Also there is already a lot of documentation about Pharo. Pharo for The Enterprise , Pharo By Example and Deep Into Pharo should keep you occupied for months if not years.

As a newcomer its important to keep an open mind, Pharo is actually easy to learn but unlike other programming languages is not the same thing repackaged diffirently . Its quite diffirent actually and I think that is what makes it so productive and fun.

In any case the secret of learning is very simple ... ask and you shall receive ;)

Oh and welcome to Pharo .And remember if you are not having fun then its a Pharo bug and you should report it ;D

*grin* I like that a lot. It made me laugh. It almost would go well on the web site somewhere.

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Ichiseki <[hidden email]> wrote:

Konnichiwa
First thanks to those that gave me some directions to start with Pharo /
Smalltalk.
Now I have some questions that I'm sure are very stupid.
The first one is, is there a way to use the bouncing atoms and the lights on
on Pharo 3? Because I tried to build it in there and it doesn't work

I guess you are referring to Pharo By Example. I strongly recommend that use the Pharo Image that was used when the book was written, so that the screen shots match.
http://pharobyexample.org/image/PBE-OneClick-1.1.app.zip

kilon is kindly putting effort into updating PBE to Pharo 3 but I'm not sure of the status.
https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExample

The second one is why there are like three different smalltalk environments?
Pharo Squeek and Cuis? What are the differences? Is there a standard? I find
this extremelly intriguing as it seems like there is a lot of dupplicate
effort?

You might also ask why there are several different C programming environments - gcc, LVMM, Eclipse, Visual Studio
The answer is that philosophies differ. Pharo and Cuis are forks from Squeak. To over simplify... Squeak has several major community projects built on top which value the stability of their platform. Over many years Squeak has grown and evolved in tandem with those projects and is strongly coupled to them. Someone wanting to develop new projects on top of Squeak viewed parts of that as bloat, but for those existing projects it was essential behaviour. There have been many contributors over the years, and as a large system there are parts that hard to support. So those wanting to make Squeak leaner, more modular and cleaner for better long term support forked Pharo from Squeak. Now Squeak is also progressing in these directions, but without the constraint of those existing projects Pharo can be more aggressive. To me it comes

The third one is which is the line between the core language and frameworks
and libraries in Pharo?

That is a very good question and one we should probably work of defining better. Many frameworks and libraries are part of the environment delivered by Pharo, and personally I think of the whole package "as Pharo". I had a hunt around and maybe [1] gives a good summary of the core language itself. Now Smalltalk has been a continual evolution from the 1970s. Squeak and Pharo are directly descended from Smalltalk-80 [2]. In 1998 ANSI Smalltalk [3] defined a core language and libraries for half a dozen commercial vendors, but of course the trouble with standards is they dull innovation, and Pharo seeks to go beyond.

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SmalltalkTutorial
[1] stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.pdf
[2] http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/uploads/172/standard_v1_9-indexed.pdf
[3] http://www.eli.sdsu.edu/courses/spring01/cs635/readingSmalltalk.pdf

I found that, for instance Cuis has something like a basic image and some
external frameworks, pharo has some internal frameworks and lots of
externals. This is weird from someone comming from other languages.

Could you provide some non-weird examples form other languages?

One of the great advantages of Smalltalk is working in a live Image. However this can be a disadvantage in terms of reproducibility and dependencies forming between frameworks. Pharo seeks to break this by separating frameworks out of the Image, to provide a minimal Image and a means of automatically loading frameworks back in via continuous integration.

The fourth is I found that documentation is very, very scarce especially for
some frameworks. This is also a major drawback for a newcomer to pharo. A
very thick entry barrier.

We need to do better here. Are there any particular frameworks that you are looking at?
cheers -ben

Thank you
Ichiro

--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Two-Questions-from-a-Newbie-tp4772384.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

kilon.alios

Re: Two Questions from a Newbie

I have ported 4 of the 14 Chapters and have provided updated pictures and content. Damien has also ported a chapter and Stef has partially ported another.

I will keep contributing , my goal is also to provide a new chapter for introducing newcomers to coding into basic OO concepts and I want to extend the documentation on Morphic too.

You can view the book here.

https://www.gitbook.io/book/kilon/pbe

This will always have the latest version since I push from the main repo in github.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 5:53 AM, Ben Coman <[hidden email]> wrote:

kilon alios wrote:

Fortunately Smalltalk is a never ending journey into the land of weirdness and Pharo is its champion. Pharo is by far the most actively developed open source Smalltalk out there. Most likely more actively developed than the commercial ones too. So the overlap is pretty minimum actually.

Smalltalk is not a programming language. Its a live coding environment that has also a very minimalistic language. Yeap documentation is a big problem in Pharo. I was complaining about it a few days ago. However people here are very helpful and very friendly to newcomers (unlike other programming languages ) and stackoverflow questions never go unanswered so you are not alone and people can help a lot. So its not that bad. Also there is already a lot of documentation about Pharo. Pharo for The Enterprise , Pharo By Example and Deep Into Pharo should keep you occupied for months if not years.

As a newcomer its important to keep an open mind, Pharo is actually easy to learn but unlike other programming languages is not the same thing repackaged diffirently . Its quite diffirent actually and I think that is what makes it so productive and fun.

In any case the secret of learning is very simple ... ask and you shall receive ;)

Oh and welcome to Pharo .And remember if you are not having fun then its a Pharo bug and you should report it ;D

*grin* I like that a lot. It made me laugh. It almost would go well on the web site somewhere.

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Ichiseki <[hidden email]> wrote:

Konnichiwa
First thanks to those that gave me some directions to start with Pharo /
Smalltalk.
Now I have some questions that I'm sure are very stupid.
The first one is, is there a way to use the bouncing atoms and the lights on
on Pharo 3? Because I tried to build it in there and it doesn't work

I guess you are referring to Pharo By Example. I strongly recommend that use the Pharo Image that was used when the book was written, so that the screen shots match.
http://pharobyexample.org/image/PBE-OneClick-1.1.app.zip

kilon is kindly putting effort into updating PBE to Pharo 3 but I'm not sure of the status.
https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExample

The second one is why there are like three different smalltalk environments?
Pharo Squeek and Cuis? What are the differences? Is there a standard? I find
this extremelly intriguing as it seems like there is a lot of dupplicate
effort?

You might also ask why there are several different C programming environments - gcc, LVMM, Eclipse, Visual Studio
The answer is that philosophies differ. Pharo and Cuis are forks from Squeak. To over simplify... Squeak has several major community projects built on top which value the stability of their platform. Over many years Squeak has grown and evolved in tandem with those projects and is strongly coupled to them. Someone wanting to develop new projects on top of Squeak viewed parts of that as bloat, but for those existing projects it was essential behaviour. There have been many contributors over the years, and as a large system there are parts that hard to support. So those wanting to make Squeak leaner, more modular and cleaner for better long term support forked Pharo from Squeak. Now Squeak is also progressing in these directions, but without the constraint of those existing projects Pharo can be more aggressive. To me it comes

The third one is which is the line between the core language and frameworks
and libraries in Pharo?

That is a very good question and one we should probably work of defining better. Many frameworks and libraries are part of the environment delivered by Pharo, and personally I think of the whole package "as Pharo". I had a hunt around and maybe [1] gives a good summary of the core language itself. Now Smalltalk has been a continual evolution from the 1970s. Squeak and Pharo are directly descended from Smalltalk-80 [2]. In 1998 ANSI Smalltalk [3] defined a core language and libraries for half a dozen commercial vendors, but of course the trouble with standards is they dull innovation, and Pharo seeks to go beyond.

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SmalltalkTutorial
[1] stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.pdf
[2] http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/uploads/172/standard_v1_9-indexed.pdf
[3] http://www.eli.sdsu.edu/courses/spring01/cs635/readingSmalltalk.pdf

I found that, for instance Cuis has something like a basic image and some
external frameworks, pharo has some internal frameworks and lots of
externals. This is weird from someone comming from other languages.

Could you provide some non-weird examples form other languages?

One of the great advantages of Smalltalk is working in a live Image. However this can be a disadvantage in terms of reproducibility and dependencies forming between frameworks. Pharo seeks to break this by separating frameworks out of the Image, to provide a minimal Image and a means of automatically loading frameworks back in via continuous integration.

The fourth is I found that documentation is very, very scarce especially for
some frameworks. This is also a major drawback for a newcomer to pharo. A
very thick entry barrier.

We need to do better here. Are there any particular frameworks that you are looking at?
cheers -ben

Thank you
Ichiro

--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Two-Questions-from-a-Newbie-tp4772384.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

philippeback

Re: Two Questions from a Newbie

In reply to this post by Ichiseki

Hi Ichiseki,

Welcome!

One can load the demo of the atoms like this:


Gofer it 


     url: 'http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/PharoExtras/MorphExamplesAndDemos/main' 

     username: '' 


     password: ''; 
     package: 'MorphExamplesAndDemos';

     load.
 


BouncingAtomsMorph new openInWorld.


( https://gist.github.com/philippeback/7d760bb6882896a5bbff )


Some things were broken in there for loading in 3.0. If fixed what was needed to allow you to load it in.


What I noticed:


GraphMorph is missing (anyone having an version? Or maybe we could use Roassal ?)

There are mentions of registration in flaps, which are obviously remnants of Squeak version.


HTH


Phil