Hi Ralph,

just in case you where not addressing my comments only but the subject in  
general:

On Thu, 11 May 2006 13:20:35 +0200, you <johnson at cs.uiuc.edu> wrote:

> People keep mentioning technical aspects of Smalltalk as being the
> ones that will make people want to use it.

I'm in the software business for quite some time, selling either  
solution+adaptation or else new+from+scratch, to small, medium and large  
organizations. When I look what we and the competitors throw in, it's all  
the same: innovation=technology and  
technology=what+makes+our+offer+better+than+theirs+even+if+initial+investment+is+huge.  
Not that I do advocate that, but it is how it works.

>  Technologists are
> interested in technology, so this is not surprising.

It is the innovation which makes buyers believe that your offer is better  
than other's. So we are called technologists <sic> but I have no problem  
with that.

> However, people
> are more important than technology.

Absolutely! But in competition, what counts is how many people the CIO or  
CTO can eliminate from the payroll, in contrast to whether or not they are  
more important than technology. I does not help if someone likes that or  
not.

>  If Smalltalk is going to have a
> resurgence, the people who know and love Smalltalk will have to make
> it happen.

I do not believe that Smalltalk needs a resurgence because a) it is vital  
and b) healthy and strong and c) it inherits these attributes from its  
community :-)

>  It isn't going to happen automatically.  Jeremy Chan is
> right to emphasize people problems like "no big company is pushing
> it".

This it not far away from what I wrote above.

So, let me try a conclusion: Smalltalk does not belong to the kind of  
technology (aka innovation) which implicitly or explicitly enables to  
scratch people from someone's payroll! !!

Right so :-D let's enjoy it :-))

Happy smalltalking everybody.

/Klaus