I agree completely. Pharo is a Smalltalk, but it need not be constrained by Smalltalk-80. Pharo is completely free to chart its own course. As far as I can tell, Nik Boyd's Hoot Smalltalk is doing the same thing.
This is purely a PR matter. Pharo's reputation doesn't want to be tarred with Smalltalk's feathers. So the philosophy is, sever all ties with Smalltalk's legacy. Well, that's one approach. Here's another: change the public's perception of Smalltalk. Take the bull by the horns. That's the total premise of my five-year PR campaign. Smalltalk's legacy is not an albatross. It can be a source of great power for publicity. I intend to prove that. Ben Coman wrote > I am of the side of this argument that Pharo is a kind of Smalltalk, > but the group that forked Squeak to create Pharo did so with the > express intention of being separate-from-Smalltalk > and we should respect that intention. Indeed here we can see three > reasons why they feel the need to advertise that separation... > > On Fri, 7 Feb 2020 at 21:45, TedVanGaalen < > tedvga@ > > wrote: >> >> make improvement/changes only in such >> a way that anything written before will >> run without any modification > > You are constraining what Pharo can be. > > >> Downward compatibility prevents people >> from have tediously edit and test their packages >> again and again each time some have >> the "brilliant" idea to deprecate stuff. > > You are constraining what Pharo can be. > > >> If you want to implement newer core like things >> co-existence with previous is preferable. >> Do at the very least not alter the core/system classes. > > You are constraining what Pharo can be. > > > The aim of the advertised statement that Pharo-is-not-Smalltalk is to > avoid you "later" being surprised if it differs from ST-80. > A marketing strategy analogous to a "fail early" programming paradigm, > and avoid such arguments that try to shackle Pharo. > > In practice, its probably many years before Pharo is any more > incompatible with Smalltalk than the incompatibilities between > existing Smalltalks. > But Smalltalk-backward-compatibility should not be one of your > tick-boxes to choose Pharo. > > cheers -ben -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
