So, you're saying that the prototype for Pharo and Squeak was Smalltalk 71 or one of the other, earlier versions of Smalltalk?
In any case, I know the early history of Smalltalk too. All I'm saying is that your original point was flawed: the ultimate goal of programming languages is to be useful tools; otherwise, they are merely art.
Experimentation during the development of a programming language is an obvious part of inventing them--as experimentation and prototyping is with any tool--but experimentation is not their ultimate goal.
> the ultimate goal of programming languages is to be useful tools; otherwise, they are merely art.
Many programming languages exist to be "merely" art; eg. pretty much everything on esolangs.org. There's nothing wrong with that.
Also, you're the only one talking about "useful tools". I used the phrase "useful day-to-day" very carefully: for example, space telescopes are "useful tools", but they're not useful for the day-to-day tasks people encounter in the way that a hammer is.
I think the suggestion is that Alan Kay was disappointed that there was no Smalltalk-82, Smalltalk-84 and perhaps disappointed that there was no Smalltalk-04 with all the base libraries re-designed around traits.
Skimming, I could not discern the difference between traits and interfaces, although the paper seems to distinguish the two. Could you summarize? I'm interested and I lack the bandwidth for a careful reading at the moment.
I don't know if it's what you meant, but I read your comment as overly dismissive. Pulling things out of references makes for better conversation. Of course, if you also don't have time or bandwidth, or it is just really hard to summarize, that is understandable.
In any case, I know the early history of Smalltalk too. All I'm saying is that your original point was flawed: the ultimate goal of programming languages is to be useful tools; otherwise, they are merely art.
Experimentation during the development of a programming language is an obvious part of inventing them--as experimentation and prototyping is with any tool--but experimentation is not their ultimate goal.