Granted that what we have now often seems like a pile of kludges. Probably because our modern systems evolved "organically" over a span of decades, and technica

Granted that what we have now often seems like a pile of kludges. Probably because our modern systems evolved "organically" over a span of decades, and technical issues have been solved with compromises rather than careful planning ...However, I'm pretty sure if you booted up a SmallTalk machine from the 70s, you'd find there were A LOT of bugs and unfinished corners. The UI was really not polished or user friendly. The impression I got is that they barely had it working, that it was more of a tech demo than any kind of finished product. I don't think you'd want to trade any of your modern software for something from then. I mean, yes, they thought of clever things back in the 70s, but don't go imagining they had some nice, clean, perfect implementation of those ideas.