>> It's true that people favor popular languages. That's what the term "popular" means. It's also true,
however, that >> people with Smalltalk experience usually have a much better grip on OO design than those who only know the >> more popular languages.
I thought his goal was to produce pro coders that will throw to the market. So It was my belief that he should invest in languages with job prospects. But it seems this is not the goal and he aims for something more freestyle in terms of teaching , so smalltalk will be perfect for his needs.
My issue with smalltalk is severe lack of documentation , buggy libraries (had several issues with morphic crashing squeak) and generally a very small community .
Other than that, I find Squeak amazing product and that is why I consider it , together with lisp for a major project I am planning. If I believe squeak did suck, I would not be here in the first place. And I don't believe that is the fault of the community that
the above weaknesses exist. More or less all programming languages that are not that popular have them.
I just love the graphical nature of st , the live coding, the DSL abilities, the community of polite people (contrary to lisp community which I had to face arrogance more than I expected) and general a product that is both mature and way ahead its time. I even consider making my project in both lisp and squeak / pharo ( though a smalltalk only version is not excluded either as I have my reservation about usefulness and necessity of lisp ) as I would love to gives this way my support to the community and make this product a little more popular and taken more seriously.