Yeah there's a difference between being popular and influential. Smalltalk is influential without being all that popular.

I suspect that's largely because most smalltalk implementations don't store code in git. "A smalltalk" is more like a Linux distro than a phone app. It's almost like the main purpose of a smalltalk is to build more smalltalks. It's a good way for developers to build a deep, powerful tool for other developers, but it's a less good way to build user experiences targeted at non-programmers, who are going to want to have a bunch of different apps to use not a bunch of different operating systems to use.

Good economics for the classroom; bad economics for the real world. Then and now, though, a great way to play with novel ideas in programming languages.