Ramon Leon wrote:
>> It seems to me that adding strong typing (or whatever the correct
>> term is) to Squeak would chip away a one more perceived "deficiency",
>> and win some political points in the "language wars". That should
>> end the arguments: we've got both.
> 
> 
> Only if you consider manifest types to be a good thing, most 
> Smalltalkers don't.

I see it purely as a marketing issue. If typing is something
that's blocking wider adoption (whether justified or not),
and we have a way to fix it, then just do it and move on.
But it's possible that we won't have to, if the mindset has
changed (as Michael points out in his message).

On a similar vein, a C++ based VM (and the Strongtalk mystique)
might have some marketing points (but, once again, don't sacrifice
scarce developer resources). But the message might just end up:
"we now have the Smalltalk technology that the Java VM
implementers bought and adapted (nearly 10 years ago)."

Another point about typing:  would the typing information
be useful for improving the developer tools (e.g. refactoring
could be more precise)?