Smalltalk suffers mostly from lack of marketing and bad management of the companies that sell Smalltalk implementations. Apparently, the Sun team that worked on the Oak project (which ended up producing Java) first wanted to use Smalltalk but couldn't get a good deal from ParcPlace, vendors of VisualWorks. So they invented their own language. See this post from comp.lang.smalltalk.
Squeak does have some rough edges since it is mostly a research platform (although companies (other than Disney) are starting to use it for real world projects). However, to prevent your comments on Squeak from being generalized, I have some objections to your rant:
And don't ask them to try and learn the language either, because there's no documented API, and the purportedly self-commented code really isn't.
Learning Smalltalk is probably the easiest thing in the world, if you know the conceptual OO stuff, which is the same as for Java,C++,CLOS,... There are only 5 reserved words (true, false,nil,self,super). It literally takes you half an hour to learn Smalltalk syntax.
Since Squeak is mostly a research platform, the code might not be documented so well in some places. However, you have superior code browsing in every Smalltalk IDE and the entire code of your library is open source. So you do not only have the comments to the code, but also the code itself, if you care. BTW, the Smalltalk frameworks have been refined for over twenty years now. Talk about clean frameworks.
Also (and yes, I realize I'm reaching here), but the syntax is all backwards. It's not sufficiently like natural laugnage to be easy for beginners to use, and it just frustrates experienced programmers used to nearly every other language (i.e., based on C).
I came from C++ to Smalltalk and I cringe whenever I have to go back. Smalltalk code is readable as almost normal text, whereas you often do not see the forest for all the parenthesis in C++ or Java. For example:
Squeak might not be what you want for normal product development (checkout VisualWorks or one of the other 8 commercial Smalltalk implementations), but within the Squeak world, certainly the most exciting stuff is happening.
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Smalltalk suffers mostly from lack of marketing and bad management of the companies that sell Smalltalk implementations. Apparently, the Sun team that worked on the Oak project (which ended up producing Java) first wanted to use Smalltalk but couldn't get a good deal from ParcPlace, vendors of VisualWorks. So they invented their own language. See this post from comp.lang.smalltalk.
And don't ask them to try and learn the language either, because there's no documented API, and the purportedly self-commented code really isn't.
Learning Smalltalk is probably the easiest thing in the world, if you know the conceptual OO stuff, which is the same as for Java,C++,CLOS,... There are only 5 reserved words (true, false,nil,self,super). It literally takes you half an hour to learn Smalltalk syntax.
Since Squeak is mostly a research platform, the code might not be documented so well in some places. However, you have superior code browsing in every Smalltalk IDE and the entire code of your library is open source. So you do not only have the comments to the code, but also the code itself, if you care. BTW, the Smalltalk frameworks have been refined for over twenty years now. Talk about clean frameworks.
Also (and yes, I realize I'm reaching here), but the syntax is all backwards. It's not sufficiently like natural laugnage to be easy for beginners to use, and it just frustrates experienced programmers used to nearly every other language (i.e., based on C).
I came from C++ to Smalltalk and I cringe whenever I have to go back. Smalltalk code is readable as almost normal text, whereas you often do not see the forest for all the parenthesis in C++ or Java. For example:
In Java:
synchronized (this) {
while (aNumber > 0) {
try() {
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException) {
}
TheCriticalCode
}
The equivalent in Smalltalk:
self synchronized:
[ self waitWhile: [aNumber > 0].
TheCriticalCode ]
Squeak might not be what you want for normal product development (checkout VisualWorks or one of the other 8 commercial Smalltalk implementations), but within the Squeak world, certainly the most exciting stuff is happening.