Pharo 7.0 released
TLDR: Pharo needs mountains of high-quality documentation equal to Python&#x27;s docs or Java&#x27;s docs if it seriously hopes to attract server-side or desktop mindshare among developers.<p>Long Version:<p>In 1980, Smalltalk had some of the best documentation of any language out there. In 2019, it basically has none. By 2019 standards, Pharo 7 ships without any documentation at all. That&#x27;s a game-stopper.<p>Pharo 7 looks really polished. It sounds like the design team put in tons of hard work over the past year and half to produce this release. Moreover, since it&#x27;s smalltalk, Pharo is also probably very powerful for both web and desktop development. BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS IF DEVELOPERS CAN&#x27;T FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE IT!!!<p>(pardon the all caps, but I want to emphasize my point)<p>Here is my message for the development team: if you really want developers to start building stuff with Pharo, then you absolutely must (1) write detailed, soup-to-nuts, high quality docs for web design and (2) write another set of detailed, soup-to-nuts, high quality docs for desktop GUI programming.<p>The Pharo book doesn&#x27;t cut it--not even close. It&#x27;s not a very good book. The Pharo MOOC doesn&#x27;t cut it--again, not even close. Who wants to learn that way? ProfStef is just a fancy hello world; it&#x27;s really not a tutorial and it doesn&#x27;t lead anywhere.<p>I realize that what I&#x27;m saying comes across as pretty strong medicine, but please understand, that&#x27;s because I actually think Pharo looks amazing and would like to use it.<p>In my opinion, you should stop development on Pharo and document what you&#x27;ve built instead. Write docs for a year. Today&#x27;s release announcement states that the Pharo 7 team closed 2142 issues. Brag in 2020 about the fact that you wrote 2142 pages of documentation and tutorials over the past year. Make your documentation coverage as thorough as your testing coverage.<p>Imagine what might happen if Smalltalk 2020 was as thoroughly documented as Smalltalk 80.