On Monday, February 07, 2022 09:31 CET, Marcus Denker <marcus.den...@inria.fr> wrote: On 7 Feb 2022, at 09:10, contac...@kathe.in wrote: On Monday, February 07, 2022 08:57 CET, Marcus Denker <marcus.den...@inria.fr> wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2022, at 08:41, contac...@kathe.in wrote: > > Hello Marcus, > > Thanks for responding with thorough details, but I'm not such a good OO > programmer, so what I need to know is; > Will we be able to continue developing with Pharo using the same old > Smalltalk-like syntax? Or, will there be major changes some time in the > future? Like how (I think) "_" from Squeak was replaced with ":=" in Pharo! > := is I think even ANSI Standard, or not? There are no plans for syntactical changes… But of course: The *goal* of Pharo is not to be Smalltalk80. I have to admit I kind of misunderstood Squeak back then… I really thought the idea if was to take ST80 as a startingoint “to invent the future”… I still like that idea, I have to say… to me what fascinates me is how to take something that is as of a great idea as ST80 and improve it… for example just consider the resources (in terms of memory or processing power or networking) we have today vs. 1978. The “let’s through it all away and start from scratch” approach is not great, either… as you need something to buld upon. And: as soon as you finish that “better” system, you would have the same problem: you would be stuck with a “finished” system, while the world continues to evolve. It is a real interesting research question: How an you build Systems that can evolve over a long time ? Systems which evolve over time need to have a very tiny core which is supremely malleable. For one, I would start with a "Forth" and add an object-system to it using the "Metaobject Protocol" along with a Common Lisp like "Condition System". Forth in the context of the core of an object system is interesting… someone did in 1979 a Smalltalk and Forth inspired system called “Rosetta Smalltalk" https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1113572.1113555 But: the nice thing of evolving a system is that you *always* can show a real, working result. You can have users, including yourself… you can find ways of financing your work that is not just promising something for the future. (which you can only do so often before people get sceptical). I think being part of the early Squeak community kind of burned for me the “let’s not improve that (relatively) simple thing A, instead wait for <genius X> to finish <amazing Project Z>. Imagine instead you would build a feedback-loop *inside* of your system... Marcus Agree about what you felt within the Squeak community, I was there too around 1999~2000. There were a bunch of geniuses there, but the way I understand it, geniuses produce the initial spark, but you need strong-willed, perseverent people to kindle the project there-after. The reason I was drawn to Pharo is because of what Ducasse and you and others like you have done with the core spark of Smalltalk-80 based Squeak running Morphic. Though, I've always liked the MVC environment more and fell in love with the "Third-Way" project to deliver a full-blown widget-set for MVC developed by a guy called Gartner (I think) from Germany. Can you elaborate on your feedback-loop *inside* the system idea? Especially in the context of Pharo?
