1.1: What is Pharo?

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Pharo is a modern, open-source, dynamically typed language supporting live coding inspired by Smalltalk. Pharo and its ecosystems is composed of the six fundamental elements:

A dynamically-typed language with a syntax so simple it can fit on a postcard and yet is readable even for someone not familiar with it.
A live coding environment that allows the coder to modify its code while the code executes, without any need to slow down his or her workflow.
A powerful IDE providing all the tools to help manage complex code and promote good code design.
A rich library that creates an environment so powerful that it can be viewed even as a virtual OS, including a very fast JITing VM and full access to OS libraries and features via its FFI.
A culture where changes and improvements are encouraged and highly valued.
A community that welcomes coders from any corner of the world with any skill and any programming languages.

Pharo strives to offer a lean, open platform for professional software development, as well as a robust and stable platform for research and development into dynamic languages and environments. Pharo serves as the reference implementation for the Seaside web development framework available at http://www.seaside.st.

Pharo core contains only code that has been contributed under the MIT license. The Pharo project started in March 2008 as a fork of Squeak (a modern implementation of Smalltalk-80), and the first 1.0 beta version was released on July 31, 2009. The current version is Pharo 5.0, released in May 2016. Pharo 6.0 is in alpha development and planned for release in April 2017.

Pharo is highly portable. Pharo can run on OS X, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and Raspberry Pi. Its virtual machine is written entirely in a subset
of Pharo itself, making it easy to simulate, debug, analyze, and change from within Pharo itself. Pharo is the vehicle for a wide range of innovative projects, from multimedia applications and educational platforms to commercial web development environments.

There is an important principle behind Pharo: Pharo doesn’t just copy the past, but it reinvents the essence behind Smalltalk. However we realize that Big Bang style approaches rarely succeed. Pharo instead favors evolutionary and incremental changes. Rather than leaping for the final perfect solution in one big step, a multitude of small changes keeps even the bleeding edge relatively stable while experimenting with important new features and libraries. This facilitates rapid feedback and contributions from the community, on which Pharo depends for its success. Finally Pharo is not read-only, Pharo integrates changes made by the community, daily. Pharo got 100 contributors from all over the world. You can have an impact on Pharo, too!