Bits of History, Words of Advice (On Smalltalk)

The title of the blog post is from the "green book" that describes the efforts of the companies Xerox first licensed Smalltalk to:

http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/BitsOfHistory/

Some bits that stood out to me, though the whole piece is full of interesting points:

> I believe, the community has been self-selected to consist of those who are not bothered by Smalltalk's initial limitations, and so are unmotivated to address them or support those who do. In fact, they often could not even see these limitations staring them in the face, causing them to adopt unrealistic business policies that hurt them more than anyone else.

> Perhaps an even deeper problem with Smalltalk is that it attracts people who are a tad too creative and imaginative; organizing them into a cohesive movement is like herding cats.

I work in Smalltalk for hobby projects and it's mostly a fun experience. Very powerful debugging and introspection makes it easy to take on stuff I would not consider in any other system.