On 21.11.2008, at 00:36, Mark Volkmann wrote:

> On Nov 20, 2008, at 5:28 PM, David Mitchell wrote:
>
>> Most of the things that make Smalltalk great (what makes Smalltalk
>> Smalltalk) are the things that hold it back for a lot of people.
>
> Maybe I'm naive on this, but it seems like it should be easy  
> convince lots of people that Smalltalk has a beautiful syntax and a  
> wonderful development environment.


Maybe you are naive ;)

I think David nailed it.

Smalltalk is powerful precisely because it is different than today's  
popular programming environments. The idea of a "live system" is too  
strange for the masses.

The thing with the popular languages is that they all are used in  
pretty much the same way - write source code in a file in an editor or  
IDE of your choice, build your program, run it, debug it, ship it.  
This makes it relatively easy to switch to a new language, it's  
basically just a different syntax and a change in the makefiles. You  
can easily replace parts of your project with pieces in another  
language. The SCM can work the same. You can continue to use the  
editor you know in your sleep.

All that makes switching to Smalltalk hard to do on your own, you  
basically need a team that has made the transition already. It also  
makes it hard to use for a little side project, because the initial  
overhead of new things to consider is so big. It makes it hard to find  
its place in the wider open-source community, which is becoming (or  
already is) the primary educational resource for new programmers.

But to cater to these wider audiences you would indeed have to strip  
Smalltalk of what makes it Smalltalk. It's been done of course, but  
what you end up with is not Smalltalk anymore.

- Bert -