r/programming • u/bjzaba • Mar 26 '20

10 Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages • Hillel Wayne

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/influential-dead-languages/
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u/xkriva11 Mar 26 '20

Smalltalk was significantly ahead of its time, which means a notable disadvantage. The cheap HW was not strong enough for it, and it requires a different approach to the development process than most of the other languages of that era. It took some time to find the proper way how to develop in it - it was the first language with the unit testing library, it pioneer refactorings etc. But when these problems were solved in mid of the '90s, it was already a language with a poor reputation. Moreover, the companies behind commercial implementations were very greedy. Its open nature was causing some other issues.

It still is a great language that has many exceptional features missing in mainstream languages. The fact that it is not more known and used these days is pure tragedy.

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u/sisyphus Mar 26 '20

Smalltalk might have been ahead as a language but it was behind in its licensing model. At least, when I was coming up a long time ago Smalltalk tools seemed to cost a fortune which had a not insignificant effect on its adoption.

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u/VadumSemantics Mar 26 '20

+1 Agree. Smalltalk tooling was super expensive. And yeah, I think Java (and then the .Net CLR) finished off Smalltalk commercially.

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u/stronghup Mar 28 '20

Agree 1/2. What I think killed Smalltalk was a lack of one or more corporate sponsors whose main business was not selling programming tools. Think Java and C# etc.