Smalltalk as a language is small ("fits on a postcard"), and anyone can implement this. However, to be usable, smalltalk really needs to live in a full feature

Smalltalk as a language is small ("fits on a postcard"), and anyone can implement this. However, to be usable, smalltalk really needs to live in a full featured IDE. Full featured IDE in the 90's meant expensive software from vendors, and the limited pool of developers made development expensive. Had Pharo come around 30 years earlier, we might have seen a very different result.