Please tell me when Java, C, C++, etc programs stopped working because
their runtime systems had changed.
code because the languages had changed.
Post by Norbert HartlI understand what you are saying but it contains some misconceptions
about the modern software world.
âThe earth is not stopping to turn just because you want to stay on
the sunny sideâ
There is two funny concepts going on in the modern software industry.
The one tells you that because you want to do a product everything
else around you should come to a full stop so can comfortably build
your software not disturbed by other things. The second one tells you
that you _have to upgrade_ ⊠there is this magical force preventing
you from staying where you are. Both notions are funny alone but they
come combined and then they turn out to be a non-sensical monster.
Letâs take a different approach. Put in everything you say about
software, libraries, etc the word version. So you can build upon Pharo
version 3 your own product. You can stay at that version and it wonât
change. If the software you sell is not 80% pharo but your own you
should not have a problem just to stay on that version because you
develop your own stuff. But still the world did not stop turning and
there is pharo 4. You decide there are a few nice features but the
work to adjust is too big to take the risk. Then there is pharo 5 and
you ⊠nahhh not this timeâŠ.Then there is pharo6 and they not only
changed the image but also the way source code is managed. That
prevents you further from adjusting. But hey you can still be happy
with pharo3 and it does not change.
So what is the real problem? Yes, money/time is not enough. I think
there are a lot of people risking their health to promote pharo and
now we have a consortium that can pay engineers to do work on pharo.
You see what pharo is doing and you think it is good. You can also see
that there are too less resources to proceed in the way you need it to
go. So you decide to show pharo to the world inspiring people with
some kind of a vision. The result is that more people pay into the
consortium and we hire more engineers. And then one day the consortium
has enough money to pay engineers that can care about a LTS (long term
support) version of pharo. So you can stay on pharo version 3 and
still get those annoying bugs fixed. And hey this team has also enough
time to provide you with tools that make a migration to pharo version
4 more easy and less annoying for you. And then you have your own
product based on pharo version 4. And then for version 5, version 6,âŠ.
Sounds like a dreamâŠbut heyâŠit is indeed realistic. It just depends on
how the people approach it
How does this sound?
Norbert
Post by Trygve ReenskaugThanks for your quick answer. I have only a fleeting knowledge of
Pharo but liked what I saw. The Squeak class library has seen organic
growth since 1978 or earlier. Pharo gave it a thorough overhaul. At
the Pharo kernel was a minimal image with a minimal class library.
The rest of the functionality was partitioned into packages that
could be added to the kernel image as required. Beautiful. But only
my dream?
/Matthew 7:24-27: And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the
winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because
it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these
words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who
built his house on the sand."/
I am developing an IDE for non-programmers called BabyIDE, a
non-intrusive extension of Squeak. Where the Class Browser in Squeak
is used to work with one class at the time, the BabyIDE browser is
used to work with structures of collaborating objects, ignoring their
classes. I would like to develop a BabyIDE image that gets broad
usage and long life. I'm looking for a rock to build on and hoped it
could be what I thought was the Pharo kernel+ a few selected
packages. In your answer, I read that if I build BabyIDE on Pharo, I
will be building on sand.
pharo.org <http://pharo.org/>writes: "/Pharo is a pure
object-oriented programming language.../". The only language I can
see is defined by the release image. A Pharo programmer builds
application programs in this language. He or she can add new classes,
change existing ones, subclass them, add or change methods, change
the Smalltalk dictionary, etc. etc. An extremely flexible and
powerful language.
A tale from the future when Pharo is a mainstream language:Business
customers benefit from end users using applications that are written
by Pharo programmers who built on the Pharo language and environment
that had been developed by the Pharo community. One day there is a
happy announcement: A new version of Pharo will be launched tomorrow.
It is truly cool and includes any number of improvements, some of
them documented. And, by the way, applications written in the current
Pharo will no longer work. So please inform your customers that you
will not be able to serve them for a while. We are confident that all
your application programmers will be happy to drop whatever they are
doing in order to adapt their applications to the new Pharo so that
you can start serving your customers again.
Cheers
--Trygve
Post by Norbert HartlCan you elaborate on what you consider as a kernel? There are always
things moving in the pharo world. The last years the virtual machine
got some iterations and it is still not fully stable. For pharo it
is hard to have it stable because we feel the need that a lot of the
existing parts need to be replaced to be useful in these times.
Furthermore pharo is also prototyping platform for programming
language features. All of these are counter-stability measures. So
if you need a stable kernel from native ground up to UI pharo wonât
be that thing you are looking for the coming years (if at all). You
always need to adopt to change so you need to define your required
scope better in order to get an estimate.
Norbert
Post by Trygve ReenskaugI'm working on a programing paradigm and IDE for the personal
programmer who wants to control his or her IoT. The size of the
target audience I have in mind is >100 million. I gave up Squeak
long ago as a platform because they obsolete my code faster than I
can write it. I have now frozen Squeak 3.10.2 and hope its runtime
will survive until I find a better foundation. My hope is that
Pharo has a stable kernel that I can build on. According to
Stephan, this is not so. Is there any plan for creating a stable
Pharo kernel that people can use for building software of lasting
value for millions of non-expert users?
--Thanks, Trygve
Iâve taken a look at what would be needed to
support magma on pharo a few years ago. Chris always told us he uses it
professionally on squeak and/*has not enough capacity to keep up with changes in pharo without
having a customer/maintainer for it.*/ Twice a year
or so someone asks about magma on pharo and takes a look. AFAIK there are
no real obstacles to a port, but magma uses a lot of deep implementation
specifics that will take an experienced smalltalker to deal with, and a lot
of mailing list archeology as pharo changed a lot since magma worked on
pharo last
Stephan
--
/The essence of object orientation is that
objectscollaboratetoachieve a goal./
Morgedalsvn. 5A http://folk.uio.no/trygver/
N-0378 Oslo http://fullOO.info <http://fulloo.info/>
Norway                     Tel: (+47) 22 49 57 27
--
/The essence of object orientation is that
objectscollaboratetoachieve a goal./
Morgedalsvn. 5A http://folk.uio.no/trygver/
N-0378 Oslo http://fullOO.info <http://fulloo.info/>
Norway                     Tel: (+47) 22 49 57 27