A common conceit in fantasy and science fiction novels is that the characters are living “after the fall”. A great civilization came before, but it was destroyed and much of its learning was lost.

That’s how I feel about smalltalk. I picked it up on a whim a year or two ago, and it’s been a revelation.

I feel cheated. We had this thirty years ago, and I still had to spend all those years writing C, or – I shudder to remember – Java? With smalltalk, coding is fun again.