You're probably right about visual works, I haven't used it since 2005 so I kind of fell in that window. I don't have a problem w/ non-native looking GUI's in

You're probably right about visual works, I haven't used it since 2005 so I kind of fell in that window. I don't have a problem w/ non-native looking GUI's in principle, but I just think Squeak and Pharo are kinda fugly. Bad spacing, weird colors, weird fonts. If that only effected my development environment I could live with it, but if the apps I make are also going to look like that? Ick. The only thing I'd really use it for is writing games where GUI's are always going to be custom anyway. (I think Smalltalk in general would be great for game development actually.) Another thing is that at least in other smalltalks, it generally used OS windows at least. The controls might look weird, but it does feel like part of the system. Writing code in Squeak feels like you're either using a VM or Remote Desktop, it's just totally isolated. The thing is most of these, in isolation, aren't deal killers, but once you've added up enough weird points it gets a bit too weird. You could make similar arguments about Java, but I think the difference is in magnitude: Java's weirdness is kind of weird, smalltalk's weirdness is really weird.