[Someone]

> The Classic Mac OS model in general I think is the best that has been or ever will be in terms of sheer practical user power/control/customization

A point for discussion is whether image-based systems are the same kind of thing as OSes where system and applications are separate things, but if we include them, Smalltalk-80 is better in that regard. It doesn’t require you to reboot to install a new version of your patch (if you’re very careful, that’s sometimes possible in classic Mac OS, too, but it definitely is harder) and is/has an IDE that fully supports it.

Lisp systems and Self also have better support for it, I think.

[muyuu]

smalltalk missed the opportunity to incorporate more sophisticated versioning, including distributed versioning with current SotA ideas

of course modern smalltalks or st-inspired systems could still incorporate these ideas

[igouy]

Perhaps decades ago there was "more sophisticated versioning" for Smalltalk implementations:

2001 "Mastering ENVY/Developer".

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Develope...

[muyuu]

ENVY suffered of a problem that many other Smalltalk technologies suffered: a conflict between a culture of proprietary zeal as a business model and powerful network effects of adoption. Visualage in general was plagued by this. I used to blame Microsoft and Apple successes for the pervasive push for lock-in and "integration" as a feature that defined the era so strongly.

You had on the one hand had a technology that desperately needed adoption to build a culture and best-practices documentation, and on the other hand you had short term profit motive seriously getting in the way, so what you had that was completely cutting edge for decades, eventually it wasn't anymore - or the world moved in another direction and your once revolutionary technology became an ill fit for it.

By the 2000s with monotone and darcs, but specially with the rise of git, other standards for versioning have superseded what could have been. Smalltalkers already by the 2010s should have been wise to try to incorporate what is clearly a standard now but instead a bunch of invented-here systems for versioning and repositories and hybrids have developed in its place. And by incorporate i don't mean "let's make X for ST" but making it core in their implementation so that the system itself is more easily understood and used, even if its to take pieces of it away and use them which is actually a strength and not a weakness! contrary to some brand of 90s-era beliefs.

Generally speaking, to this very day it's regarded as cool and as a feature in ST world that something is ST-only, conveniently "integrated" into the system as tightly as possible and, implicitly but insidiously and glaringly, near-impossible to use elsewhere except maybe as a concept and laundered of its origin.