Posted by stepharo on Aug 07, 2014; 8:31pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/Two-Questions-from-a-Newbie-tp4772384p4772392.html


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/