| ▲ | bobajeff 8 months ago | |
As someone who is fascinated with Smalltalk and to a lesser extent Lisp. I think the reason those didn't catch on more broadly is that they were too early and different. Smalltalk I believe was designed to run on computers that wouldn't be around until the 90s and and when the 90s arrived it didn't have a big company pouring gobs of money into marketing it unlike Java. There are other factors that also contributed it's unpopularity. Like who wants to distribute a whole system for each smalltalk program they sell? I think also Lisp and APL weren't designed to run on the weak PCs in their day. You needed to use a timesharing system to program in them. | ||
| ▲ | igouy 7 months ago | parent [-] | |
> ... when the 90s arrived it didn't have a big company pouring gobs of money into marketing it unlike Java. IBM not big enough? :-) But of course IBM's consulting group were technology neutral and pivoted from Smalltalk to Java when the wind changed. > Like who wants to distribute a whole system for each smalltalk program they sell? Smalltalk was marketed to corporations as a 4GL replacement for green screen systems. So enterprise wide client-server apps for insurance/reinsurance, call center outsourcing, assembly line control, options/derivatives/reconciliation, ERP CRM TLA TLA, etc etc I don't claim to have been in "The Room Where It Happens" meetings, so I'll just say that from my lowly perspective during that period Allen Wirfs-Brock's comment ring true. | ||