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I think it is called "Why Smalltalk failed" and is easy to find with a search. Java was web, Perl was web, and ST wasn't ready. Java and Perl were free as in b

I think it is called "Why Smalltalk failed" and is easy to find with a search. Java was web, Perl was web, and ST wasn't ready. Java and Perl were free as in beer, ST was expensive. I think ST hardware was expensive too. ST is very different from C & C++. ST had multiple vendors too.

leoc 8y ago
"why smalltalk failed" may afaicr have been first thing I tried: https://www.google.com/search?q="Why+Smalltalk+failed" https://www.google.com/search?q="Why+Smalltalk+failed" . https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/why-smalltalk-failed-to-dominate-the-world-93e7e4195039 https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/why-smalltalk-failed-to-do... isn't the article I was looking for. It's much more recent, and much less in-depth. However http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead covers a lot of the same ground, unsurprisingly. I'm pretty sure that late-'80s/early-'90s ST was largely run on commodity (or fairly-commodity) hardware: PCs, Macs, Unix workstations. It was commercial Lisp that tended to be tied to dedicated hardware. IIUC Smalltalk did have a then-expensive appetite for RAM though. The commercial STs of the time weren't good as CGI languages like Perl and PHP for the same reasons they weren't suitable as Perl-style scripting languages in general. Meanwhile, behind the hype it soon turned out that Java applets were not ready for prime time either, while servlets were something that could probably have easily been replicated in ST (and for all I know, likely were).
- kristianp 8y ago
  googling site:www.reddit.com smalltalk leoc one of the results is: Bambi Meets Godzilla - "I watched Smalltalk die." https://web.archive.org/web/20080706101400/http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/01/bambi_meets_godzilla.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080706101400/http://www.oreill...

leoc 8y ago

"why smalltalk failed" may afaicr have been first thing I tried: https://www.google.com/search?q="Why+Smalltalk+failed" https://www.google.com/search?q="Why+Smalltalk+failed" . https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/why-smalltalk-failed-to-dominate-the-world-93e7e4195039 https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/why-smalltalk-failed-to-do... isn't the article I was looking for. It's much more recent, and much less in-depth. However http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead covers a lot of the same ground, unsurprisingly. I'm pretty sure that late-'80s/early-'90s ST was largely run on commodity (or fairly-commodity) hardware: PCs, Macs, Unix workstations. It was commercial Lisp that tended to be tied to dedicated hardware. IIUC Smalltalk did have a then-expensive appetite for RAM though. The commercial STs of the time weren't good as CGI languages like Perl and PHP for the same reasons they weren't suitable as Perl-style scripting languages in general. Meanwhile, behind the hype it soon turned out that Java applets were not ready for prime time either, while servlets were something that could probably have easily been replicated in ST (and for all I know, likely were).

kristianp 8y ago
googling site:www.reddit.com smalltalk leoc one of the results is: Bambi Meets Godzilla - "I watched Smalltalk die." https://web.archive.org/web/20080706101400/http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/01/bambi_meets_godzilla.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080706101400/http://www.oreill...