Michael Chean wrote:
> 
> My experience also parallels Jerome's.  Because of my inexperience I am not
> a very strong advocate for Smalltalk, but just the task of convincing my
> engineer friends to look outside their comfort zone has proven impossible.
> My friend at JPL considers Smalltalk as having missed the boat, which seems
> to be the case.  When I mentioned that I was following this list he
> suggested I look at Tcl/Tk instead.

None of my engineering friends understood my love for Smalltalk either-
but then, they were reluctant to use C instead of Fortran.  A big part
of it then was that they didn't have a clue what it was about, and there
was almost no way to get them to sit still long enough to realize that
it wasn't a gui kit, or a scripting language, or a toaster, etc.

Smalltalk has been "missing the boat" for three decades.  It's still here,
and it isn't going away.  Once upon a time, people didn't rate languages
on popularity, but on fitness to the task.  I've been very very happy
with it for over a decade.

Go ahead- learn Smalltalk.  It'll be fun, and the rewards are there.
I bet your friends don't use spaces in their Fortran code- so don't expect
them to understand.

les