Future of Smalltalk on the Internet

By Ralph Johnson

Smalltalk has lost the war for Internet scripting language to Java.

• Proof is that Netscape, Microsoft, etc. are signing up.
• Java won based on good marketing.
• Java did not win on technical grounds. Smalltalk is just as good.
  • Smalltalk is a good language for making a WWW browser. Proof is SmallWalker
  • It is easy to make applets in Smalltalk. It can be done as a class project
  • Smalltalk can be made as small as Java.
  • You can make Smalltalk just as secure as Java.

• Success comes from being in the right place at the right time.
• It is hard to predict what will be the "killer app"
  • Don't put all your eggs in the client/server basket.
  • Smalltalk needs to branch out.

• Use it to communicate, like in the Smalltalk archive and Ward Cunningham's wiki web.
• Build collaborative applications, like wOrlds
• Build servers, like VisualWave