alt Hacker Newsthe whole Smalltalk saga is a bit of a tragedy looking back (EDIT: as someone who didn't live through that era) through the context of the current state of consumer computing being so "non-convivial", if I can borrow a phrase from Ivan Illich. Empowering users by allowing them to conform the tools to their own usecase often feels like the exact opposite paradigm of the modern milieu.
Or maybe I'm just entering my "old man yells at cloud" phase of life haha
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Well, I DID live through that era and I AM the 'old-man-yelling-at-clouds' ;-) and the main issue was that getting Smalltalk developers was a HUGE headache. I worked for a Telecom company (Canada's largest, rhymes with 'Ortel') and we needed to develop our own courses - yours truly developed and delivered dozens of hours of training.
This lead to some extraordinary per-diem charges that I knew some folks enjoyed for a while, mostly paid for by the Financial industry. Eventually those on the paying side looked for cheaper alternatives .. and yes, the new-kid-on-the-block Java played a big role, but so did Visual Basic!
Saga: https://web.archive.org/web/20130612055149/http://www.mojowi...