This is an interesting keynote presentation by Robert Martin delivered during RailsConf 2009. According to Robert Martin, Smalltalk was the most superior language of its time and even with such unique features and even being the epicenter for introducing Pattern based development, Test Driven approach and various OO principles we are following, Smalltalk was never successful with mainstream developers and eventually extinct with the popularity of JAVA in early mid 1990s. He believes that failure of Smalltalk users to ignore problems commonly faced by enterprises and attitude of Smalltalk users in being more superior than other platform developers were one of the crucial reasons that killed SmallTalk. He further expressed during the keynote that if Ruby and Rails community fail and/or ignore problems faced by enterprises then, there is a chance what happened to Smalltalk could also happen to Ruby.

I think the video is a must watch if you a Ruby developer and/or want to jump to Ruby/Rails band wagon. There’s no doubt that Rails is one of the leading web frameworks that have embed the concept of test driven development at its core and Ruby developers have always been in the fore front adopting agile development strategies. But whenever I read some blog posts/articles and writings by Ruby enthusiasts and developers, I feel some kind of rebel and attitude of superiority in their expression which is somewhat same as mentioned in the keynote. Ironically, most of the Ruby syntax is also inspired from Smalltlk with small blend of C; that’s why Ruby is also called reincarnation of Smalltalk but lets hope Ruby won’t be next Smalltalk and as Microsoft new initiative Make Web Not War.