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Comment by aitchnyu | Hacker News Reader

>In Pharo, everything is an object. This purity and uniformity in the system and language design makes Pharo clean and comfortable to learn.

Does this mean Python and JS meet the same definition and are as "clean and comfortable"?

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I remember while learning Smalltalk how surprised I was when if statements and loops weren’t syntax of the language, but methods on objects. True and False are singletons of a Boolean class, which has a method ifTrue:ifFalse which take lambdas as arguments. For loops, a lambda which returns True or False has a method whileTrue: which takes a lambda as an argument.

Although I like Python, and I don’t know JS well, I really enjoyed learning Smalltalk, even though I will likely never use it professionally.

Python comes close, but what makes Smalltalk special is that flow control and loops are done with objects. There are almost no keywords.

Imagine that you could do something like this in JavaScript:

(name === "Mike").ifTrue(() => console.log("Hi Mike");

The implementation of this is done through a Boolean class, which has two subclasses, True and False.

True implements the ifTrue(fn) by invoking "fn", False simply returns.

The main advantage is that everything is predictable and inspectable.

JS is for me clean and comfortable, sometimes more than C# and for some others Python is, and everyone has their own answer to "what makes them so".

Everything being an object may do the trick for you or not. I don't mind a marketing page (even for a programming language) being opinionated, as long as not borderline delusional.

Unlike most OOP languages, it's true, and not just marketing, for Smalltalk to make the claim that everything is in an object.

I was not talking about everything being an object. I was talking about that claim being the key to being nice and comfortable.

Many sibling comments, IMHO, miss the point of the parent and focus on the claim about python and js.

Python and js could perhaps have been completely object based. It still wouldn't make them comfortable for many.

The sentence says that it makes Pharo clean and comfortable to learn. Not that it makes every language clean and comfortable to learn :-)

Yes and the comment I replied to vaguely suggested that it didn't make python and js comfortable to learn and everyone focused on the fact that in these languages not everything is an object.

True, but personally I think JS and Python would have benefitted from being more consistent about being object based. JS in particular, since it's prototypal, but has function constructors and class syntax, along with other things added over time that make the language more complex.

While Python wasn't born pure object based, it is definetly object based in its current version.

    Python 3.9.5 (default, May 27 2021, 19:45:35) 
    [GCC 9.3.0] on linux
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.    
    >>> x = 1
    >>> type(x)
    <class 'int'>
    >>> dir(x)
    ['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__bool__', '__ceil__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__divmod
    __', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__float__', '__floor__', '__floordiv__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribut
    e__', '__getnewargs__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__index__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__int__', '__
    invert__', '__le__', '__lshift__', '__lt__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__neg__', '__new__', '__or__
    ', '__pos__', '__pow__', '__radd__', '__rand__', '__rdivmod__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__',
     '__rfloordiv__', '__rlshift__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__ror__', '__round__', '__rpow__', '__rrshift__'
    , '__rshift__', '__rsub__', '__rtruediv__', '__rxor__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__sub__',
     '__subclasshook__', '__truediv__', '__trunc__', '__xor__', 'as_integer_ratio', 'bit_length', 'conjugate',
     'denominator', 'from_bytes', 'imag', 'numerator', 'real', 'to_bytes']
    >>> 
    >>> y = [2]
    >>> type(y)
    <class 'list'>
    >>> dir(y)
    ['__add__', '__class__', '__class_getitem__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__
    doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd
    __', '__imul__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '_
    _ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '
    __setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'clear', 'copy', 'count', 'extend', '
    index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']     
    >>> 
    >>> def sum(a, b): return a + b
    ... 
    >>> sum
    <function sum at 0x7f673429d1f0>
    >>> dir(sum)
    ['__annotations__', '__call__', '__class__', '__closure__', '__code__', '__defaults__', '__delattr__', '__
    dict__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__get__', '__getattribute__', '__globals
    __', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__kwdefaults__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__modul
    e__', '__name__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__qualname__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setat
    tr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__']

Apparently everyone keeps forgetting that after the new class type declarations were introduced and the primitive types made subclasses of them, everything in Python is an object as well.

I think you are replying to the wrong comment. That's not even my point.

> Unlike most OOP languages, it's true, and not just marketing, for Smalltalk to make the claim that everything is in an object.

Its not uncommon in dynamic OOP (or even object-first multiparadigm languages); it’s true in Python, Ruby, JS, and others.

For example, in Python, are activation records objects you can manipulate? Seaside uses this in Smalltalk to implement continuations. If not, then not everything is an object in Python.

Ruby is much closer to smalltalk than python and js (in the evything is an object sense, and partially in the clean and comfortable sense).

Maybe the closest "real world" examples would be Lua, and scheme?

Ruby comes closer than Python or JS with it's blocks and consistent object model (including primitives).

When Pharo says 'everything' they mean _everything_.

Primitives in javascript are not objects.

> Does this mean Python and JS meet the same definition and are as "clean and comfortable"?

Are things like message sends or activation records accessible and manipulable as objects in Python and JS?

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