That model (image with batteries included) of Smalltalk development does not work in reality in an open source setting. It still works if there's a company behi

That model (image with batteries included) of Smalltalk development does not work in reality in an open source setting. It still works if there's a company behind the implementation, but with typical open source development, where everyone goes on to write things they are interested in at the moment, without looking back on the rest of the ecosystem all that much, this model breaks. It's like maintaining a Linux distro, but with a few orders of magnitude less people and with tooling that never reaches any kind of stability (because it's replaced before it has the chance). Distribution in the vein of Cuis and GST - small, with carefully curated and selected content - are the better way of going forward, unless you're willing to fork some $1k for a commercial license for Visual Works or ST/X. GST is also a Smalltalk than can be embedded in other applications. Try doing that with Pharo. The lack of GUI by default - it exists as a loadable module, BTW - was not the thing that derailed GST development. It was a small, niche project and when some of the contributors lost interest in it, it stagnated and, after a while, fell behind other implementations. If only the JIT in GST was finished, and a few compatibility layers were added on top of its "Smalltalk in Smalltalk", GST could well resurrect. Not that it's going to happen... In the meantime, if you want to play with Smalltalk, I'd suggest using either the open-source ST/X or VW personal use license. Morphic is nice to experience once - use Cuis or Squeak for that. (I'm writing this comment right after the rant about Pharo so I'm probably repeating myself here, but wanted to note that Pharo is the perfect example of how badly the traditional Smalltalk development model fits the modern reality. It simply does not, at all.)