mental / rydia.net wrote:
> Quoting Peter Hickman <peter / semantico.com>:
>
> > mental / rydia.net wrote:
> >
> > > But Smalltalk never caught on, at least not to the degree that
> > > Ruby has.
>
> > What are you talking about. In what way has smalltalk never
> > caught on?
>
> I should never have phrased it that way.  Read it as "I think
> Smalltalk never caught on to the degree that Ruby has."
>
> Which is still a pretty sloppy and radical claim (mea culpa), but
> not so inadvertantly inflammatory.
>
> It also needs to be read in the context of the original post,
> concerned with the evangelization of certain functional programming
> techniques.  I didn't intend to invoke popularity contests like TPCI
> or the infamous and unscientific "google test".
>
> My thesis is that Ruby (for whatever reasons) has "caught on better"
> in the sense that it's attracted a much wider spectrum of
> programmers than Smalltalk.
>
> My impression of Smalltalk programmers is that they tend come from
> more "functional-literate" backgrounds, so blocks are not such a
> new thing for most of them.  By contrast, I get the sense that new
> Ruby programmers are represented by a much broader bell curve when
> it comes to FP.

iirc the main alternatives to Smalltalk were C++ and 4GLs

The folk learning Smalltalk range from experienced procedural
programmers to non-programmers:

IBM implemented Smalltalk across a wide range of hardware, and trained
their consulting staff.

The Open University used Smalltalk to teach programming to 5,000-8,000
students a year (for about a decade, they switch to Java in 2006).


>
> I'm guessing you've got a significant Smalltalk background (I don't,
> though I'm basically literate in it) -- based on your own
> experience, do you think this is accurate?
>
> It'd be interesting to have a real, scientific, survey, but I'm not
> sure how one would go about conducting one in this case.
> 
> -mental