Smalltalkers have diferent points of view about "what is" Smalltalk;
 and in most cases it (the pov) change over time (sometimes without
 reflection about when/what/how changed).
Smalltalk as a content (a set of virtual "objects") is not a good model
 because it do not consider time and the (side) effects of living
 creatures changing the objects.
Smalltalk considered as an evolving content (e.g. contents
 where changes can't be predicted) face us to the problem
 that we cant say that smalltalk "is" what it content (nor what
 is "declared" to be there)...
What is preserved in any smalltalk instance through time is the
 identity of the system.(***)
We download/obtain "aSmalltalk" from anywhere and after the first
 seconds it change (using our hands) to become "my" smalltalk (*).
 The "super smalltalk" instance is an abstraction (it do NOT exist,
 and it is not related with life).
Each individual smalltalk instance use one or more smalltalkers
 to change; the code and the contents (tools, frameworks, the VM, etc)
 can change using our hands/mind... what is preserved is
 the identity of the system (that includes people).
It is frequent this days that smalltalkers "go out", and say:
 I changed, this... and this and it is NOT a smalltalk... (I am not a
 smalltalker anymore... or I have changed to become another kind
 of developer... or it is "my" invention/idea) IMHO it is part of
 the effects of feeling "outside the world" (that are required
 to start learning about smalltalk),
 and the convenience to be someone that show
 "something new"; in the world we live today it is accepted that
 changes are good (no matter what are the effects of the change,
 nor how it scales).
In short, Smalltalk is what we do with something we started to
 change, preserving it/our identity. (it is matter of identity)
We can start our smalltalker life downloading one or more smalltalk
 execution environments, and after some years we can be running
 on other smalltalk env., or over other VMs (e.g. a javascript VM like
 my case with S8, after +20 years using multiple smalltalk platforms,
 adn wasting time and resources waiting for better smalltalk VMs :-)
 on multiple devices... smalltalk in that case will be one system
 on multiple devices, on top of multiple O.S. and on diferent VMs
 (with or w/o bytecodes, on top of intermediate runtimes, and in mixed 
environments like using S8 running on top of js and .net VMs at
 the same time, in the same system with heterogeneous object
 models, or as android/ios apps, or in browser as U8
 contribution (**) )...
IMO any Smalltalk HAS a compiler for "smalltalk syntax", but the
 syntax defined at the time of Smalltalk-80 defines the experiences
 of smalltalkers of the '80s and not the experiences of MOST of
 the smalltalkers (the same feeling that when we realize that most
 of human beens are down the grass, and we are live instances
 of something that HAS changed)
So.. we can relax and do NOT try to constrain "what smalltalk is".
IMHO We can try to accept other POVs about smalltalk, and
 use others pov to try to join forces w/o trying to change someone,
 nor excluding from "smalltalk community"; that under my pov,
 the community is an abstraction.. an instrument for exclusion
 of some souls that do not trust in votations, or do not communicate
 what they are doing... we dont need that, we are free to change anything
 and we have been doing that for decades.
cheers,
Ale.

(*) "my" as in "my God", "my love", "my son", "my smalltalk", it define
 that we are for the thing... (we do not own the thing, the idea/ideal
 own us, our resources and our life time)
(**) cant resist to mention S8 and what we are doing to run our
 smalltalk systems on javascript execution engines, in an unique social
 development effort with smalltalk...
 refs.
    http://u8.smalltalking.net/browsecontributions.aspx
     http://u8.smalltalking.net/profile/aleReimondo/239/index.html
(***) we have been reflecting about preservation of identity of
 smalltalk systems in Smalltalking for more than a decade and
 the effects of that reflections are observable today in most smalltalkers
 that has been related with latin smalltalk communities.
The concept of identity, time, life and its effects on systems
 helped us to relax and let people think the way they want about
 informatics, and what "in-formation" is... :-)





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jecel Assumpcao Jr." <jecel at merlintec.com>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" 
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 10:02 PM
Subject: [squeak-dev] what is smalltalk? (was: Smalltalk dialects and GSoC)


> Any discussion of what is Smalltalk and what isn't can't get very far
> without first clearly defining a few things. Are we assuming that
> "Smalltalk" and "Smalltalk-80" are equivalent? Does the ANSI Smalltalk
> standard play any role in the discussion?
>
> Even if we make our assumptions clear, there is still a lot of
> subjectivity involved. Many people consider Scheme to be a different
> language than Lisp, but its creators do not and the famous "Structure
> and Interpretation of Computer Programs" course uses the name "Lisp"
> exclusively except for one initial note saying that the Lisp they use is
> Scheme. On the other hand, everybody can easily agree that Scheme is not
> a Common Lisp.
>
> It seems silly to have a definition of "Smalltalk" that would exclude
> Smalltalk-72 to Smalltalk-76, and yet Smalltalk-72 is more different
> from what we have now than NewSpeak (which I would not call a
> Smalltalk). So perhaps we should have such a definition. On the other
> hand, at one point I got tired of people considering Self to be a
> different language so I renamed my project from Self/R to Neo Smalltalk.
> In the Self 4.0 "images" that included Mario Wolczko's patches you could
> file in all of the GNU Smalltalk libraries and they would work
> perfectly.
>
> -- Jecel
>
>
>