Ben Coman wrote > the most important are... > performance, portability and development speed.
I wonder about this because Ruby and Python are no speed demons and it's hard to imagine anyone (except maybe lisp) beating Smalltalk in development speed. I didn't read the article, but it seems to me the main factor in popularity is random chance because the industry is a pop culture where trends are more about being cool (or getting a job) than any underlying principles. Coding "academies" seem to be the latest caricature of this phenomenon: "Want to code? For just $1,995 we'll will get you job ready w the sexiest languages in just 3 weeks! And that's not all… we'll even throw in this ironic hipster coding T-shirt for free!!" That said, IMHO mainstream popularity is a curse. The sweet spot is a critical mass where the core and desired libraries are available and maintained. ----- Cheers, Sean -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Developers-f1294837.html
