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that it's a little outside of the mainstream, but it has enough new
ideas in it that will give it a very long lifespan.  Smalltalk will
still be relevant 20 years from now, just as Lisp-based languages are
still reasonably relevant today, after 40 years.  I suppose "having a
lot of new ideas" and "being a little outside of the mainstream" go hand
in hand.  (Smalltalk isn't *that* obscure, though... there are more
Smalltalk programming jobs available than, say, Python or Lisp jobs.)

Contrast this with a mainstream language like Java, which will have a
huge spike in popularity for a few years, but since it's mostly just a
cleaned-up version of another language (C++), it won't be cutting-edge
for very long.  Which isn't to say that it will dissappear, just that it
will be easier to replace with something better as the new "King of the
Mainstream Programming Languages" in a few years.

In any case, Smalltalk is definitely worth exploring if you're looking
at programming languages similar to Python.  See http://squeak.org,
http://www.goodstart.com/dialects.html, etc.

- Doug Way
  EAI/Transom Technologies, Ann Arbor, MI
  http://www.transom.com
  dway at mat.net, @eai.com


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