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5 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2012–2026
1:00:56 · 87K views · May 8, 2009
Robert Martin's RailsConf 2009 talk looks at why Smalltalk lost out despite its technical strengths. He draws lessons about language communities and arrogance that he argues could hurt Ruby too.
HN cites it in discussions of language evangelism, community dynamics and zealotry, as an accessible account of how a good language can die for non-technical reasons.
14 comments from Hacker News
> your arguments against Rust come off as biased. Yes, I'm pretty aware of this, and I keep this bias voluntarily, because Rust is generally touted (hyped?) as a Silver Bullet, and I'm wary of Silver Bullets. So, I want to highlight that fact. > Sorry if I came across as rude. No hard feelings. As I said, I'm not under delusion of a perfect life. I just said it. > I just find it slightly puzzling how your stance on it is kind of going up and down. :) I have a habit of mirroring the tone of the person I'm talking with. Combine it with the fact that English is not my native language, it's possible that "tone adjustment" is far from perfect. > it's been quite a while since I've seen Rust zealotry on HN... Yes, there's no zealotry here, and it's great, but I'm exposed to a wider community than HN people. Unfortunately, HN represents very small percent of the programmers around. A great talk I like about this issue is Robert Martin's "What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too" [0]. Let's say, I'm marred and bitter from tons of zealotry and flamewars over the years (yes, I'm not young folk). > While that likely does wonders for your mental health... [Snipped for brevity] First of all, thanks. I pray that you work in a place you love and never work again. I'm very aware that how being solo makes me different and biased, and I think I highlighted at a couple of places. On the other hand, I understand what teams and team-related activities are important for code quality. Let's say th
We always make this discussion with friends. I don't think every language should tick the boxes the same way. I also personally like Go a lot. It's filling the gap between C++ and Python for me. If I need something compiled with proper threading support, but C++ would be an overkill, I reach for Go. Go is designed with a human centric view, IMHO: "Make writing great programs easier rather than design a language with novel/cutting edge features, but with a high cognitive load", and I find it as a noble aim as Rust's guarantees and aspirations. I understand why people love Rust, but I don't think it's the only one, or the proverbial silver bullet that we finally achieved. Yes, it's nice. Yes, it brings many things to the table, but it's not the final solution for once and for all. You like Rust? Great, Go for it (unintended pun alert), but I think we need all languages from all paradigms and perspectives. I find this talk [0] very informative and useful while interacting with other languages and communities. I'm not sharing this with any insinuations towards you, but just find it generally perspective broadening. [0]: this video - What Killed Smalltalk could Kill Ruby.
After watching a few Alan Kay talks where he pines for Smalltalk, I happened to watch this Robert Martin talk "What killed Smalltalk could kill Ruby". this video The tldw reasons he gives for why Smalltalk died: - too easy to make a mess where adding complexity would be punished late. - arrogance - community isolated itself from the world and did not address common industry needs - commercial only - alternative free languages dominated
For some context on Martin's comments his talk on how arrogance effected Smalltalk is probably relevant: this video and probably worth watching if you enjoy Uncle Bob's soulful stylings and are interested in his thoughts about programming language communities.
Quite interesting, maybe one should also check this older talk: Robert Martin, "What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby", 2009 this video