I gave Pharo a chance. It stinks. Its classes are cluttered and complicated. The documentation is horrible. The syntax
is simple, but simple does not mean easy. In a lot of ways, I found myself re-inventing perfectly good wheels to get anything done because I couldn't figure out how to use the stuff that was there. In the end it was a waste of effort.
And being forced to use a GUI to do simple text-related things made it smell from the get-go, but that's a personal preference thing.