You can try - I certainly did - but it's inferior, in nearly every way: performance most of all, usability, interfacing with the host OS, availability of libraries, APIs, interactive documentation, discoverability, customization..
The fact that Emacs has been in use (for decades) as a tool aimed at primarily solving everyday problems, means that it's been optimized for practicality to a ridiculous extent. That's not the case with Squeak, since it still has a very strong academic/research focus and a much smaller userbase than Emacs.
That's not to say that Squeak is useless, I'm a hardcore Emacs user and I do use Squeak too, but it's nowhere near as practical. It does however offer by far the best environment to experiment with Smalltalk and image-based development.
On the other hand, I don't recommend Pharo, as I found it even less practical than Squeak with frequent braking changes and a -seemingly- complete lack of focus that has pulled the project in widely different directions over the years. At least, Squeak is cohesive and hasn't broken with Alan Kay's vision.
> On the other hand, I don't recommend Pharo, as I found it even less practical than Squeak with frequent braking changes and a -seemingly- complete lack of focus that has pulled the project in widely different directions over the years. At least, Squeak is cohesive and hasn't broken with Alan Kay's vision.
Nonsense! Pharo's focus is to make writing Pharo more Pharo and easier for Pharo users. Mind, if your app isn't a Smalltalk VM and IDE, then, yea, it's full of tumult and turmoil. Aren't they on their 3rd or 4th GUI toolkit rewrite now? I mean, credit where credit is due, they eat their own dog food to be sure, but as a meal, that's just not as inviting to others.
The fact that Emacs has been in use (for decades) as a tool aimed at primarily solving everyday problems, means that it's been optimized for practicality to a ridiculous extent. That's not the case with Squeak, since it still has a very strong academic/research focus and a much smaller userbase than Emacs.
That's not to say that Squeak is useless, I'm a hardcore Emacs user and I do use Squeak too, but it's nowhere near as practical. It does however offer by far the best environment to experiment with Smalltalk and image-based development.
On the other hand, I don't recommend Pharo, as I found it even less practical than Squeak with frequent braking changes and a -seemingly- complete lack of focus that has pulled the project in widely different directions over the years. At least, Squeak is cohesive and hasn't broken with Alan Kay's vision.