Smalltalk - Re: Can Pharo meet all your computing needs?

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Re: Can Pharo meet all your computing needs?

Posted by kilon.alios on Aug 24, 2014; 11:14pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/Can-Pharo-meet-all-your-computing-needs-tp4774250p4774473.html

I agree that reimplementing things in Pharo is a good solution, if that means a cleaner and more flexible design that brings more clarity to anyone viewing the code. Definetly Pharo promotes those things or else I would have little reason to keep using it. Yes agree , my solution is a temporary solution, more like a sensible compromise, but a compromise non the less.

Having ideals and dreams is really important. "Flying" once sounded ridiculous and it was that crazy idea that brought us the airplanes, took a long time but it eventually happened.

After all there is room to implement things and there is room to take advantage existing technology , both have a lot of benefits to offer to the user.

On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 11:59 PM, Sean P. DeNigris <[hidden email]> wrote:

kilon.alios wrote
> his dynabook is vaporware

The Dynabook is a vision of what computing could be, not a product, and so
can not be vaporware i.e. announced but not delivered. Looked at another
way, you are using a Dynabook, since Smalltalk was an iteration of an
attempt to implement of this vision.

kilon.alios wrote

> "Why fight them , when you can join them?"

The problem is that "them" = "a pile of code so complicated that it's beyond
the ability of a single human being to understand". When you make a choice
to use [ GNU/Linux | OS X | Windows ] + "suite of applications that are so
cool I can't live without", you end up with LOC equivalent to the entire
Library of Congress, impossible to understand, and requiring countless
context switches for all the languages and technologies involved. After
spending the time to dig into this mess in a few places where you want to
customize, you are lucky if you have any energy left over to create whatever
your vision originally was, for which the computer seemed like the perfect
tool.

kilon.alios wrote

> So now I am exploring the concept of how Pharo can control all these apps
> without me having to reimplement these apps in Pharo which is just an
> insane amount of work to code and maintain

Of course this is better than nothing ;) It's a great way to fast-forward to
the system of our dreams - make it work, then make it right. And at the same
time I think it's important to remember that Smalltalk exists as a reaction
to the unworkability of this software we are plugging into, and that the
dream is still to see it all replaced, and then to see Smalltalk itself
replaced by Frank or whatever the next distillation is of "what a computer
really is".

My 2c... Obviously my recovery is not going well and idealism has crept back
in ;)

-----
Cheers,
Sean
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