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Comment by tonyg | Hacker News Reader

I've found a good way to approach Smalltalk systems like Pharo and Squeak is to remember they're whole systems, not just languages with a bolted-on IDE.

I like to think of each running instance as more akin to a Unix virtual machine than anything else. You end up using "in-image" version control systems like Monticello just the same way on a Unix server you use "in-operating-system" version control systems like git.

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Alan Kay originally thought about each object as a virtual machine not just each Smalltalk instance. In his own words [0]:

> I thought of objects being like biological cells and/or individual computers on a network, only able to communicate with messages

So a Smalltalk instance is actually a system of systems.

[0] https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/58732/179286

Yes, very true. And a system has a ton of interesting mechanisms.

Pharo now has pretty neat git support with Iceberg and Tonel file format.

Os as a library

the only thing i miss is a terminal. some time ago i actually found one, but it needs porting to pharo.

greetings, eMBee.

Here's a new Terminal emulator that appeared this month - https://blog.lxsang.me/post/id/24

ohhh, you are my new best friend!

i love the serendipity of this topic coming up just days after that post you found when i have not looked into it for a few years after trying for a few days to get that original squeak terminal to run in pharo.

greetings, eMBee.

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