thats a normal reaction, the vast majority of people don't care about progress they care about money. They care about using products with large market share. This is why Apple releases information about its commercial success each semester. Progress is all about getting outside your comfort zone and doing the hard work sometimes driving yourself bankrupt (see Tesla) . So Pharo or Squeak in the end is for that minority of people who look for something really different and unique. ��If all you look is an language that is a variant of C or an IDE that is a variant of Visual Studion then neither Squeak or Pharo is for you and the fact you dislike the interface is just an excuse.��
I strongly disagree on Morphic, personally I love using it. It can be cleaner but still beats any other GUI I have used in terms of ease of use without sacrificing power. Spec on the other hand looks ugly to me , weird and very difficult to understand. But maybe its just my opinion and how my brain is wired. Afterall Spec has been very popular with Pharo devs so definitely is something I keep a close eye on . I really hope Morphic does not get removed, at least continue to be distributed as third party library.Though thats is unlikely with all the hard work of cleaning it up.��
Definetly there is room for a lot of libraries and alternatives, after all each person has different needs, preferences and goals. Personally I like seeing all this variation even if that means I wont be using most of it and there will be only of handful of tools I will be using. I love seeing people thinking outside the box and going for unexplored territory and I think Pharo as a platform is ideal for that.
A roadmap is a ��very useful to have it helps the community get in sync and eliminates duplicate efforts. I am very interested into the Morphic cleanup and I may join the efforts too.��