Welcome Owen!

These questions has been raised time and again, with long discussions and pretty exaggerated statements, like Smalltalk is dead[1][2] and interesting conversations about why it didn't become mainstream, or how its ideas have mutated and live in pretty successful products like containers (ie: docker). I recommend you to check tose lins.

[1] http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead

[2] https://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/smalltalk-is-dead-long-live-smalltalk/

In my case, I found Squeak 10 years ago, I had some teaching experience using Etoys, Scracth and Bots Inc for a couple of years and to research on my master studies, now I came back since mid 2014 with Pharo[3] making the research for my PhD [4]. In the last ESUG 2016, the Squeak team celebrated the 20 years with the release of the 5.0 version with a lot of improvement. I was really glad to be there and see this vibrant community and be part of it.

[3] http://pharo.org/
[4] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html

On the hardware question, there was some SqueakNOS (if I remember correctly) for Squeak No Operative System that runs directly on hardware, but that seems like a long path for me. My idea would be to put it as an additional app that runs with the rest of your tablet/phone/laptop and progressively provides a coherent experience for the fractured world of computing.

Pharo/Smalltalk is the environment I feel most empowered these days and because of the "native live coding" experience, I can make agile prototypes of ideas and evolve them. We have a recurrent Critical Code+Data Literacy & Visualization workshop [5], so I can share the joy of Smalltalk with other learners and bridge it with current themes and issues where I think that Smalltalk ideas are particularly well suited: data activism, data visualization, reproducible research, data driven storytelling, modeling, open government and others.

[5] http://mutabit.com/dataweek/

So, despite of not being mainstream, I think that Smalltalk ecosystem is pretty vital and healthy, we can share the joy with others and learn with them without too much concern about popularity*

Welcome again,

Offray

* Popularity seems a recurrent concern in United States culture, as the popular TV shows and movies show all the time, and the cliche story moment where everybody needs to acknowledge some personal, romantic or other achievement and clap... but maybe mainstream TV shows, Cinema and news are not the proper view point for culture :-)

On 10/12/16 09:37, blubee blubeeme wrote:

Hello

I recently came across Alan Kay's talks on youtube, then that lead me to Dan Ingalls and looking at smalltalk, squeak and object oriented programming as thought up by Alan Kay in the 1960s.

I wonder how come this type of computing isn't the mainstream. We've seen other OS pop up since then that were a lot less capable that got some mainstream success.

It seems like this type of computing gets put in the kiddy corner and most people don't know about it or those who do kinda use it and sometimes people just don't seem to get it.

Has anyone ever though about making a platform where squeak is customized to the hardware, something like android, iphone, bb10 and qnx, etc..

Also if this is the wrong mailing list, can you point me at the correct mailing list for this discussion.

Best,

Owen
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