On 12 Feb 2014, at 14:54, askoh <askoh@askoh.com> wrote:
The recent arguments in Smalltalk made me have an Eureka moment on why Smalltalk is not popular. Smalltalk attracts brilliant people. But these brilliant people scare others away. Instead of Showing How, they Show Off. Instead of being inclusive, they are picky. Instead of discussing, they fight.
So, Smalltalkers, please be humble, friendly and pacific. Show How. Invite anyone interested to join. And let's talk normally.
I agree, of course. (With the second paragraph, less with the first: these discussion happen everywhere, ever read emails by Linus Torvalds ?) -- But I had an epiphany today, based on this discussion of what is the definition of Smalltalk. I hereby declare that we are the _third_ most popular language (family) in use today ! Based on this very reputable (ahem) index: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html I really think that in a broad definition of Smalltalk, Objective-C is part of the family. According to the first line of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. And messaging is at the core of Smalltalk. It also has a similar class based object model, is late bound in almost everything and has some reflective capabilities. There are even a couple of projects mixing the two explicitly. Reserve a bigger venue for the next ESUG ! Sven PS: We've had these discussions before on various occasions: it is really hard to come up with a definition of what is Smalltalk, or even a good list of what is so special about it - there really is a elusive, hard to define aspect to it.
All the best, Aik-Siong Koh
-- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Why-Smalltalk-is-not-popular-tp4743009.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.