When comparing Pharo vs V, the Slant community recommends V for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” V is ranked 4th while Pharo is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose V is:
V is easier than C and fast like C.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Object-Oriented
In Pharo everything is an object. Compiler - object, network - object, method - also an object. And objects communicate with messages. No operators, no control-flow statements. Just objects and messages. Few things to learn, but you can learn OOP well.
Pro Easily learnt
There is good, free documentation including several books written by experts with extensive examples. There is an online MOOC. There are many tutorial videos. Supportive conferences and community. Even a professional support option if desired.
Pro Live updates
The nature of Pharo being a "live" environment allows you to perform live updates to your system without requiring to restart it. You can upgrade/modify classes while serving requests at the same time.
Pro Highly productive
Pro Seaside
The framework for developing sophisticated web applications in Smalltalk is developed in Pharo. Seaside lets you build highly interactive web applications quickly, reusably and maintainably.
Pro Remote debugging
Pro Beautiful coding patterns in your IDE
No need to search google for compact beautiful examples of how to do things, your live environment source is available and you can easily live search, see how it works and copy how the masters would do it (examples most languages still copy too).
Pro Glamorous toolkit & GTInspector
Most languages are still copying the Smalltalk tools of yesterday - GTInspector (written in Glamorous) takes live exploration of code/running objects to a new level. It's really slick, and better yet, you can easily write your own inspectors in 10 lines of code.
Pro Code can be run on rock solid GemStone environment
Pro 64 bit support as of Pharo 7
Use 32 bit or 64 bit versions of Pharo on Windows, Mac & Linux.
Pro Advanced code analysis tools
MOOSE environment provides extensive, easily leveraged and class leading tools for code analysis and improvement.
Pro Can run headless for production
Pro Really simple networking and REST with Zinc
Pro Graphics, graphing and visualisation framework - Roassal
Roassal and Mondrian provide fantastic and easily used frameworks for graphics, graphing and advanced visualisations (comparable to D3.js) but with much less code. Visualisations can be rendered into web friendly graphics (SVG, .png etc.) without additional work.
Pro Fast like C
V is easier than C and fast like C.
Pro C Interop
Can import C libraries, structs, and headers.
Pro Cross-platform
Compile to many OSes.
Pro Simplicity
V is simple and powerful.
Pro Can create multi-OS GUIs
Multi-OS GUI creation is more integrated into the language than others.
Pro Clear syntax
Highly understandable language.
Pro Sum types
V has Sum Types.
Pro Generics
V has generics.
Pro Closures
V has closures, which gives the user additional options and usefulness.
Pro Safety
V is very safe.
Pro Single paradigm
Follows the philosophy that there should be only one way to do something, as opposed to multi-paradigm languages like C++.
Pro Supports concurrency and channels
Can run functions concurrently that communicate over channels.
Pro Fast compile times
Compiles programs fast, less waiting around, so more productive and fun.
Pro Friendly and helpful community
Just check the V Discord channel or their GitHub Discussions and you will see by yourself.
Pro Inline assembly
Can add Assembly code.
Cons
Con Small community
But they are very friendly and supportive. Best help comes through the mailing lists so not always easily googlable. There is also a Slack community where help is nearly instantaneous.
Con Odd language
Requires a different mindset. Much harder to apply what you know from popular or conventional languages . Switching over from or between other languages is more difficult.
Con Single threaded
Pharo's VM only ever uses one CPU core. If you want to write code that uses more than one CPU core, you need to jump through hoops such as running multiple VMs and synchronising your data.
Con Rapid changes in a language syntax/features
Since V language under a continuous development and core syntax and features will be "frozen" in a version 1.0.0, updating from older version of a language can cause a code rewrite of previously working program.
Con V 1.0 release was planned for December 2019
The first version of the language was publicly released in June of 2019, version 0.1.x. First beta version of the language was released June of 2022, version 0.3. x. Language has progressed faster than most. Welcomes contributors to join the project.
