I have determined that Squeak is not appropriate for my needs at this time despite being a fairly impressive system. Squeak seems to focus on being a very practcal language and not worry too much about more arcane computer science concerns such as language safety and strong typing.
Just wanted to comment that I don't really agree with this statement.
Me neither. This is a very irritating statement, among other reasons because:
In any case, I wouldn't consider static typing an arcane computer science concern at all... most of the more popular languages these days use static typing.
The PL community certainly has fads, and this is one of them. Static typing is a delightful *research area*, but it's usefulness is mostly unproven. PL people don't bother -- they just publish 10-50 line neat-looking programs, make broad statements about how all the other PL guys dig static typing, too, and conclude that it must be good.
-Lex