#227 overall
Pharo MOOC
Pharo
2 recommenders · 4 threads · recommended in 2 years, 2022–2026 · score 1.8
An online course introducing Pharo, an open-source Smalltalk-family programming language and its live, image-based development environment. It is offered as a MOOC and as a YouTube playlist of video lectures.
Commenters recommend it as the entry point to Pharo and the Smalltalk tradition, praising the language's programming environment and developer experience.
Programming Languagesbeginnerfreevideo lectures#pharo#smalltalk#programming environment#image-based development#mooc
Recommendations by year
20062026
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 https://richardeng.medium.com/syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fa...
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 https://youtu.be/HOuZyOKa91o
The Smalltalk flavor I strongly recommend is Pharo. There's a MOOC[1] on it, and there are several free books that cover the basics of the language itself[2][3], data visualisation[4] and numeric stuff[5]. [1]. https://mooc.pharo.org/ [2]. https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/PharoByExample9/r... [3]. https://books.pharo.org/deep-into-pharo/ [4]. http://agilevisualization.com/ [5]. https://books.pharo.org/numerical-methods/
Probably start with Pharo MOOC: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2okA_2qDJ-kCHVcNXdO5...
I recommend the Pharo MOOC: https://mooc.pharo.org/
It's a nice course on a current language in the Smalltalk lineage, that even more than 40 years after its introduction still provides mostly unsurpassed programming environments and developer experience.
It takes some time to get used to, but systems that support image-based development, in the tradition of the Smalltalks and some Lisps, can boost programming productivity a lot, by allowing very tight feedback loops. Combined with a good debugger it makes much easier to diagnose and recover from problems, and iterate over your design quickly. To experience the state of the art on this front, I recommend Pharo. There's even a MOOC at https://mooc.pharo.org/