So the death of #Smalltalk in a way came as soon as it got recognized by real programmers as being something useful; they made it into more of their own image, and it started losing its nice end-user features.
But that’s OK. This project that we started in 1995 was to make Squeak as an implementation vehicle for another end-user system for children. That was done quite well and is being used by many, many thousands of children around the world. The other way of looking at this is to realize that computers are made to be programmed by human beings. Let’s just roll our own. Let’s not complain about Java, or even about Smalltalk.
In fact, let’s not even worry about Java. Let’s not complain about Microsoft. Let’s not worry about them because we know how to program computers, too, and in fact we know how to do it in a meta-way. We can set up an alternative point of view, and we’re not the only ones who do this, as you’re well aware.
There are numerous examples on the Internet of people who have gone to one level or another by making their own point of view. Squeak is the most comprehensive because it spans the whole field. It doesn’t require any particular operating system to run because it’s self-sufficient and has a full set of tools and applications and so forth, but there are many interesting functional languages, particularly in Europe, that are of interest.
Alan Kay, http://
