Why Aren't People Using Smalltalk?

I looked (again) at Smalltalk maybe 5 years ago, and concluded that it didn't offer enough over more recent and more familiar OO languages to warrant a switch. So I guess my answer is that it introduced nice ideas, then everybody else stole them, so you no longer need Smalltalk to use them.

As a result of growing interest in functional programming, there is a large blanket hatred of OO emerging, particularly from newbies who see the two paradigms as intrinsically opposed, and who have acquired bad tastes from the standard polymorphism&#x2F;encapsulation&#x2F;inheritance languages that most people know as OO.<p>Smalltalk gets swept under the rug as well in the process.

The only appropriate answer to the IDE part is this:<p>JEREMY CLARKSON: You mention that you rent a garage.<p>JAMES MAY: Yes.<p>JEREMY CLARKSON: How far away from your house?<p>JAMES MAY: I don&#x27;t know. Seven miles?<p>JEREMY CLARKSON: You rent a garage seven miles from your house! How do you get there?<p>JAMES MAY: On... on my folding bicycle, obviously.<p>JEREMY CLARKSON: You are mad! Clinically insane!

I&#x27;ve always suspected that at the point Smalltalk needed to shine to get a generation of coders on board, the ridiculous cost of an industrial strength Smalltalk dev environment ran most of them off. Smalltalk never recovered.