The best example that I can suggest is to look at the STEPS project (i.e. what Alan was referring to in the talk): http://tinlizzie.org/updates/exploratory/pack

The best example that I can suggest is to look at the STEPS project (i.e. what Alan was referring to in the talk): http://tinlizzie.org/updates/exploratory/packages http://tinlizzie.org/updates/exploratory/packages and their papers: http://vpri.org/html/writings.php http://vpri.org/html/writings.php. There have also been a couple of attempts to reduce Smalltalk back to the key concepts it was based on with projects such as Cuis: https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev In general though, yes the Reddit comment you came across is probably a fair description of what you're likely to run into in the wild (commercial or open source) since most projects tend to prioritize the short term desires/needs at the expense of the long term. As it's often used, Smalltalk will just get them to the unmanageable mess faster. No environment/language/tool can prevent someone from doing silly things with it despite how hard their designers might try to.