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I suspect it was performance, cruft, and aesthetics that killed it more than price. After all, expensive things that get popular generally become cheaper (or ha

I suspect it was performance, cruft, and aesthetics that killed it more than price. After all, expensive things that get popular generally become cheaper (or have cheaper versions released). My experience with SmallTalk was that by the time it had any chance of uptake it was already knee-deep in cruft (e.g. multiple overlapping visual class hierarchies that would be mixed and matched within projects to devastatingly awful effect). In my experience (admittedly mostly dealing with IBM and IBM-sanctioned vendors) a typical Smalltalk demo was a program that ran 10x slower than VB on a computer with twice as much memory (and at least as good a CPU) as anyone other than a Smalltalk coder had. And Smalltalk programs tended to look awful and not be easily fixed (because of the overlapping cruft issue). I'm pretty sure that Rubyists are no more ignorant of Smalltalk than Smalltalkers are of Simula.

agumonkey 11y ago
It's weird, I've read stories about Visual Age for Java being better (UX, speed) than the first versions of Eclipse. Unless early Eclipse were unbearably slow, I took it as a sign that ST was solid for complex programs.
notdeadSTer 11y ago
> I suspect it was performance, cruft, and aesthetics that killed it more than price. After all, expensive things that get popular generally become cheaper (or have cheaper versions released). I think performance was a huge problem (I did mention it in passing). But you have to remember that just getting your hands on Smalltalk was difficult back then. There were no free versions, and the commercial versions were expensive. At least with Unix, most university workstations in the 80s had a copy, unlike VMS. The result: a proliferation of free Unix-like OSes while the less accessible VMS slowly fades into obscurity. > I'm pretty sure that Rubyists are no more ignorant of Smalltalk than Smalltalkers are of Simula. I don't understand the analogy. Ruby is an unoriginal Smalltalk knock-off that compromises its purity, simplicity, and dynamicity. Rubyists should therefore express deep admiration for Smalltalk in the same way Smalltalkers do Lisp, but they don't. Simula was an ALGOL-60 derivative that had classes and co-routines; by comparison, Smalltalk was nothing short of revolutionary, yet I've never seen a Smalltalker attack it.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  Given the most common mention of smalltalk is of it being the first OO language and I seldom see it corrected by people who should know better. At least Rubyiata acknowledge Smalltalk exists.
igouy 11y ago
>>I suspect it was performance, cruft, and aesthetics… In my experience (admittedly mostly dealing with IBM and IBM-sanctioned vendors) a typical Smalltalk demo was a program that ran 10x slower than VB on a computer with twice as much memory…<< So incompetent programmers ?

agumonkey 11y ago

It's weird, I've read stories about Visual Age for Java being better (UX, speed) than the first versions of Eclipse. Unless early Eclipse were unbearably slow, I took it as a sign that ST was solid for complex programs.

notdeadSTer 11y ago

> I suspect it was performance, cruft, and aesthetics that killed it more than price. After all, expensive things that get popular generally become cheaper (or have cheaper versions released). I think performance was a huge problem (I did mention it in passing). But you have to remember that just getting your hands on Smalltalk was difficult back then. There were no free versions, and the commercial versions were expensive. At least with Unix, most university workstations in the 80s had a copy, unlike VMS. The result: a proliferation of free Unix-like OSes while the less accessible VMS slowly fades into obscurity. > I'm pretty sure that Rubyists are no more ignorant of Smalltalk than Smalltalkers are of Simula. I don't understand the analogy. Ruby is an unoriginal Smalltalk knock-off that compromises its purity, simplicity, and dynamicity. Rubyists should therefore express deep admiration for Smalltalk in the same way Smalltalkers do Lisp, but they don't. Simula was an ALGOL-60 derivative that had classes and co-routines; by comparison, Smalltalk was nothing short of revolutionary, yet I've never seen a Smalltalker attack it.

Tloewald 11y ago
Given the most common mention of smalltalk is of it being the first OO language and I seldom see it corrected by people who should know better. At least Rubyiata acknowledge Smalltalk exists.

igouy 11y ago

>>I suspect it was performance, cruft, and aesthetics… In my experience (admittedly mostly dealing with IBM and IBM-sanctioned vendors) a typical Smalltalk demo was a program that ran 10x slower than VB on a computer with twice as much memory…<< So incompetent programmers ?