Just to chip in here - the work demonstrated on Pharo development is inspirational. Rather than throwing everything away, it shows the alternative - incrementally improving a running platform - and practicing what we preach in industry by refactoring a large elderly code base bit by bit - it's remarkable.
While its true we don���t always immediately get things fixed that we might personally want, but then again we are relying on the free personal time of others. But collectively, the most important things do get fixed/improved, and if there is something that really bothers you, then the over arching lesson is that you have to roll up your sleaves and try and fix it yourself and in showing willingness you normally find that others will help you.
So Steph et al, I am glad that you love this platform (and have for many years), but more startlingly - i heard you all talk about a vision of improvements back in Lugano many years ago��� and gosh we are seeing those improvements roll out year after year. Even more - we are slowly getting the kind of development/experiment workbench platform that good developers should have. Its being invented under our eyes, and that is exciting.