I don't think the claim is that Pharo or any Smalltalk is 'simple', but when someone new to coding has to first learn how to pretend they're using a late 70"s terminal and a crappy text editor, then remember 20000 arcane commands just to get a project built, never mind debug it, the price of entry before starting to code is too high. Coding is stressful enough (unlike most people's tasks, it has to actually work) which helps understand why the average age that coders quit and go into another field is only 30 years old. A high initial curve cuts a very short average productive career that much shorter.
I wouldn't worry about swift being as bad as JS. Nothing is.
"What makes Pharo and Smalltalk so cool is this magical simplicity on so many levels."
I have a problem with this, I think its not sincere. I know that a Pharo developers would love to throw on my face the basic syntax of Pharo that can fit in a single page but the truth is that Pharo because it is Smalltalk it follows the exact same recipe of the "get the F!@#$% out" which means it throws everything outside the language in form of libraries of objects. Pharo is definetly not that simple. Why ? Because coding is not simple .So if it is to be a fair comparison take those 500 pages and find equivalent features in Pharo and I don't think you will find that they are that different in terms of complexity.And its not as if Swift is revolutionary any more than Smalltalk or Pharo is revolutionary. All languages copy from each other.I will have to agree that Pharo appears simpler than Swift, but I doubt that it does not miss many features that Swift has. As you said its too early to say.I have not read those 500 pages, personally I dont see what the big deal is, PBE is 400 pages and barely touches what Pharo really is. I fail for the time being viewing Swift as a complex language, I just hope does not end up as ugly as JavaScript. Good ideas that are badly implemented. I doubt it though.PS: I am downloading the Swift manual right nowOn Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <[hidden email]> wrote:
It is way to early to have an opinion (especially since one should use a language before commenting), but ...
On 03 Jun 2014, at 10:53, kilon alios <[hidden email]> wrote:
> For anyone who has not not watched it yet, you can watch the Playground demo here. Looks like they were inspired by Bred Victor demos.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l62x8Oq_QP4
>
> Swift is statically typed with type inference. BUT it has generics and optional types. So it looks like it tries to let you have the cake and eat it too.
1 - it is very nice to see Apple play in the language design world (it will get traction I am sure)
2 - it feels like a pretty complex language, both in terms of syntax options, concepts and rules, especially around types (the language book is 500 pages I believe)
What makes Pharo and Smalltalk so cool is this magical simplicity on so many levels.
> It also removes the need for header files , so it really moves away from the C paradigm.
>
> There is a quick toor here
>
> https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/GuidedTour.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014097-CH2
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 11:29 AM, stepharo <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> The work on GToolkit goes in this direction. Funny enough, we also have a Playground :).
>
> Look here for an example:
> http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/dynamic-exploration-of-a-postgres-db-with-the-gtinspector/
>
> More will come in this direction. I happen to believe that this is the area with the largest potential in Pharo, and it would be great to put more effort around it. If people have an interest to participate, please just let me know.
>
> + 1
>
> Now my plate is full but I encourage people to join effort.
>
> Stef
>
>
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