[Newbies] Re: Why hasn't Smalltalk been wildly accepted?

[David Douthitt]

David Douthitt wrote:
> To my mind, one problem with Smalltalk - and with LISP and FORTH, by the 
> way - is the befuddlement when someone asks "Yes, but I want a 
> standalone executable, not a new environment." (I might add that all 
> three languages are *tops* for me....)

For comparisons sake - it is also interesting to note the traffic in 
the Usenet newsgroups.  My reader now posits the following numbers of 
unread messages in these groups (as well as Ruby for comparison):

comp.lang.ruby:       5707
comp.lang.forth:       971
comp.lang.lisp:        599
comp.lang.smalltalk:    56

Perhaps Smalltalk could use some "developer marketing" ("Use 
Smalltalk! It's great!") as well as IT Manager marketing....

What happened to the commercial interests?  I don't see any ads in 
Wired or ACM's Queue for Smalltalk (or LISP or FORTH for that matter...)