Here's some more fallout from Ovid's questions about Smalltalk:
This begs an obvious question: if they solved these problems so long ago, why are they viewed primarily as academic languages? Yes, Disney uses Smalltalk and Yahoo! Store was originally written with Lisp, but those seem like noteworthy exceptions.Issac Gouy answers that question in a followup comment:
Simple ignorance. When we know what kind of software is developed with these languages (and how much money it makes) then we no longer regard them as academic languages.Hm. Sounds like the moniker of «academic language» is precisely as descriptive as that beloved epithet, «scripting language».
I propose we stop using the term «academic language» because it is about as ellucidating as mud. (Yes, I used it myself just yesterday. I'll try to not do it again.) Alan Kay may be working on OpenCroquet as a research project, but that doesn't make it any less impressive of a piece of software. And that's not a reason to apply the diminutive adjective of «academic» to either Squeak or Croquet....
Wow! I thought that project was dead. 3D desktop/OS/workspace/whatever have such a huge "sex appeal" that I suspect they can really draw people in (the way CGI programming drew people to Perl in the 90s -- back then it was sexy.) I think these are the future of work environments, but the future isn't here yet. 3D displays are becoming more common, so I wonder if we'll finally see the convergence of these tools? Still, I we have quite a number of years before these things become common. Bummer.
