7 minutes of Pharo Smalltalk for Rubyists

What Hacker News said

Strong rec web3-is-a-scam · 2023-05 · on “Pharo 11”

As a rails developer - my introduction to Pharo started with this video: [this video] If you're not a ruby/rails developer you can still see how awesome it is, but for rubyists specifically it can really be quite mind blowing.

Strong rec throwatdem12311 · 2026-08 · on “Squeak/Smalltalk 6.1 Release Notes”

As a Ruby developer this video about Pharo smalltalk made me a smalltalk believer — not surprising because Ruby was heavily inspired by smalltalk. [this video]

Recommends mikelevins · 2020-05 · on “Ask HN: Production Lisp in 2020?”

There's this recent video showing a little of what the Pharo Smalltalk environment is like: [this video] The video was made by a Ruby programmer, rather than an experience Smalltalker, so it's more a newbie showing you cool things he's discovered, rather than an expert showing the power of the system. On the other hand, there's this one: [LINK] That one is an expert, Kalman Reti, showing some of what it's like to work with a Symbolics Lisp Machine. (It's not a real Lisp machine; they're all at least thirty years old now; this is an emulator running the old Symbolics OS on Linux). Go to YouTube and search for Rainer Joswig and you'll find a few video demos of Lisp Machines and MCL and so forth. Fi

Recommends mikelevins · 2021-01 · on “On Repl-Driven Programming”

That's a good suggestion. Walking through a set of interactions is a solid idea. For what it's worth, there are some videos around of people actually doing it with Lisp and Smalltalk systems, and pjmlp already posted a pile of them elsewhere in this thread. I can add a few more: Kalman Reti walking through some interactions with a Symbolics LispM repl: [LINK] Brian Mastenbrook demonstrating Interlisp's SEDIT structure editor in the Xerox Lisp environment: [LINK] Rainer Joswig (lispm here on HN) showing us a little bit of repl and Zmacs interaction on a Symbolics Lisp Machine: [LINK] Rainer again, showing some simple interactions with Macintosh Common Lisp, which was my daily driver for years

Recommends Qem · 2021-05 · on “Ask HN: Choosing a language to learn for the heck of it”

You're welcome. To illustrate what the Pharo environment looks like, I'd also recommend this short 7 min video by Avdi Grimm: [this video]

Recommends Qem · 2022-03 · on “Functional programming patterns in Smalltalk”

I think the most distinguishing feature is the superb environment and tooling that is a integral part of the language, by default, in most Smalltalk dialects. The tooling is so seamless integrated, that you're nudged towards simply code inside the debugger. Things like search method by example feel like a superpower. See [this video] If you're interested in experience what a modern Smalltalk looks like, I strongly recommend the Pharo programming MOOC. It was a eye opener for me: [LINK]

Recommends Qem · 2022-11 · on “Programming languages with small surface area”

In terms of surface area, I think is hard to beat languages in the Smalltalk family. Smalltalk has only six reserved words: true , false , nil , self , super and thisContext. To emphasize the simplicity, there is even a smalltalk postcard to show the whole syntax fits on it. See [LINK] I think this postcard remark may be a bit misleading sometimes, as in practice the complexity is shifted from syntax to the large class library in the system image, that packs a lot of functionality. But yet the environment is sweet and has great discoverability, with functionality like search by example. See [this video] The Smalltalk flavor I strongly recommend is Pharo. There's a MOOC[1] on it, and there are sev

Recommends sebastianconcpt · 2024-01 · on “Smalltalk simplicity and consistency vs. other languages (2022) [video]”

MountainWest RubyConf 2014 - But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk - [LINK] 7 minutes of Pharo Smalltalk for Rubyists - [this video]