I believe it was mostly economical circumstances just like the other poster said. People put up with everything as long as there is a market and they are gettin

I believe it was mostly economical circumstances just like the other poster said. People put up with everything as long as there is a market and they are getting paid. As for Smalltalk I can say that it's the only language that has never clicked with me. I have tried the usual languages including Lisp and some weird ones like Forth, Factor and the APL family and never had an issue with those but with Smalltalk I can't go beyond writing factorial. Actually if you sat me in front of a Smalltalk environment it would take me ages to figure out again where to click in order to even have the chance to create such method. The biggest problem with Smalltalk is that you have to give up your tools in exchange of some alien technology that isn't really that good to begin with. Disclaimer: I have tried Pharo, Squeak and some commercial offerings such as Cincom.