

Why Isn't Smalltalk Popular? - mdasen
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/711140/why-isnt-smalltalk-popular

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gaius
I'd say the main problem with Smalltalk is that it tries to pretend the OS
doesn't really exist. Which is fine as long as you stay in Smalltalkland, but
around the edges of the application where it has to talk to databases, the
filesystem, the network, etc it gets very messy. I dare say if you could work
in a 100% Smalltalk environment it would be very slick, but Smalltalk very
much doesn't play nicely with others. Where as (just as an example) Python
does.

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hboon
That was one of the original problems, but it doesn't apply to all
implementations. Look at Dolphin Smalltalk for example. At its time, it is
easily the best windows development tool, having very nice integration with
native controls _and_ ActiveX support. I would go as far as saying using it
for _only_ exploring and poking at ActiveX controls alone is well worth the
license fees. And look where it went. Quite sad really.

Oh, and the free (Community) version is still available for download at
<http://www.object-arts.com/>.

Oh wait a minute. I just accessed the web site to make sure it's correct. And
it looks like it's alive again. Woohoo!!

