The first modern Smalltalk (according to Alan Kay) was Smalltalk-76… as in 1976. That’s 30 years ago. This is what Steve Jobs & crew saw in ’79 on their famous visit to PARC.

There is lots of activity in the Smalltalk world at the moment.

The Smalltalk Industry Council is alive and well.

With Smalltalk Solutions being held in Toronto again, there’s some local buzz. Here’s one article in itbusiness.ca.

This article in eWeek on Cincom Smalltalk.

Instantiations has picked up IBM’s VisualAge Smalltalk and are actively developing and promoting it.

Ambrai is well underway with an OS X native Smalltalk system, which looks very promising.

Dr. Dobbs as this article on SeaSide, a web app framework by Avi Bryant et.al.

So, why the fuss about Ruby? Why don’t we just use Smalltalk.. It’s everything Ruby is, and so much more. This train of thought keeps surfacing for me.. maybe it’s time to really follow it through. Sure… I’ll keep using Ruby for knocking out scripts, utilities, and small applications. It’s good for that. But I hope to use Smalltalk for more & more over time.