Hacker News

points by flavio81 3 days ago | 0 comments

This is exciting news, and I would like to say "hello" to Richard Kenneth Eng, the sole user of Pharo in the world.

It's getting harder to pick between Pharo vs Eiffel for a new project :)

What is compelling about Eiffel? Serious question.

I think that the interesting thing about Eiffel is that it supports design by contract, an idea that was created and implemented first in Eiffel.

[–] pjmlp 3 days ago

With enough interest in integrity computing, that they are still in business, selling development environments (there are community editions available).

Eiffel was also the very first OOP language to introduce non nullable references, which I bet many folks in HN would attribute to something more trendy.

[–] sourdecor 3 days ago

Somebody has never used ENVY[0].

[0]: https://paulhammant.com/2017/09/01/smalltalk-envy/

[–] pjmlp 3 days ago

Versioning and SCM solutions on image based systems has not been a problem in decades, but alas we keep getting people that don't learn from history and think they are the very first coming up with a solution for something.

Especially if their only understanding of programming is "the way UNIX does it".

[–] creichenbach 3 days ago

I know at least 5 Pharo users, and one of them wrote a book about it (for the other 4 :P). They were part of a research group at university and made us students use it. I get why it's nice and all, but honestly it feels a bit like Crossfit, or Vim. There are a small handful of excited users who try to convice everyone else how amazing it is. (Sorry, Oscar et al.)

[–] squidsoup 3 days ago

Learning vim motions is legitimately amazing, and well worth the effort, even if you never use vim itself.

[–] jan_m_savage 3 days ago

that sounds like Lisp promotion. But in the case of Lisp, it's actually true.

[–] __sy__ 3 days ago

tbh im not sure what the value of this comment is here; also not a fan of talking down on other people's work (irrespective of how much you might dislike them). the most charitable explanation is that this was sarcasm?

[–] jan_m_savage 3 days ago

dunno why you're getting downvoted. also that original comment suffers from the fallacy of popularity (which is 50/50. Something popular is so either because it's good, or because of chance).

The comment mocking Pharo/Smalltalk could have been written by someone who probably writes in one of the Blub languages that are extremely popular. LOL.