I can tell you that when I presented smalltalk to students I looked stupid in the past. First of all because of look Second because of certain piece of code (at least smart guys know and do a difference). Stef
Stef,
You say "we damaged ourselves" - I never noted your ridiculing people for wanting a better user interface. There were many who did just that, and they were the ones who did the damage, IMHO.
Do you remember Jim Benson's Zurgle effort? Great stuff. The only thing he did wrong was to not have a lightweight theme. WinXP offered some mouse-over challenges, so I can understand why he tackled it, but it was too much (not to mention UGLY, because it looked like XP). That small slip aside, the Squeak community completely ignored what he did; I was offended for him. It was happening yet again to Pinesoft, but no more, thanks to Pharo.
Bill