An excellent overview, Lex; I've saved your "essay" in my permanent
Smalltalk clippings file.

Your observation:

"As another example, suppose there is an animation in your GUI, and you have
to choose how fast the animation runs.  There's no right answer when you are
staring at a text buffer; you need to load it up and tweak the setting until
it looks right.  In cases like this, the ongoing image of Smalltalk means
you with *no extra effort* you can start your program up and then tweak the
colors or the animation speed."

recalls a favorite anecdote from the PARC-Apple cross-seeding --

"One of the best parts of the demo was when Steve Jobs said he didn't like
the blt-style scrolling we were using and asked if we could do it in a
smooth continuous style. In less than a minute Dan found the methods
involved, made the (relatively major) changes and scrolling was now
continuous! This shocked the visitors, espeicially the programmers among
them, as they had never seen a really powerful incremental system before."
(Alan Kay, "The Early History of Smalltalk," from the chapter entitled
"Smalltalk-76.")

Sadly, "the programmers among them," for whatever reason, wound up roughly
simulating aspects of Smalltalk rather than adopting it.

Gary



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