I like your depiction of the situation and arguments, Andrew.

The inherent volatility of the software industry due to its tendency
to self disruption, as you pointed out, is fertile ground to all kinds of
crap, but we as developers should keep our eyes wide open and
look for the pearls and gems that grow here and there,
like Pharo Smalltalk.

Of course my "vision", as a Smalltalker is inherently biased, but
as you said, when "shit has to work", I think that we have good
cards at our hands.

So yesterday we had another meeting and I think I could make a
good point for Smalltalk, thanks to all your arguments here at the
list. But surely the absolute killer argument is that "this shit really
works" :-)

As pointed out by several of you, integration is key. For my particular
present case, I could successfully integrate the developed tools in
the system, a medical imaging processing pipeline,