Every time someone tells Smalltalk is dead, I remember the Mark Twain’s attributed quote on “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. Not only Smalltalk is alive and kicking, but interacting in (hopefully) interesting ways with TW, as showcased in the TiddlyWikiPharo and critical code/data literacy curriculum thread..
For me is pretty difficult to relate with conflation of success and popularity. It seems pretty ingrained in the US culture, at least from what we can see over here. From teenager TV dramas and the importance of being popular in high school, to romantic comedies, where the key moment in a couple needs to be solved in public with cheering and applause from strangers, from business reports about user growth and massive earnings.
I read the success of TW, and Pharo for that matter, in a different way, related with how they are meaningful for the ones who use and develop on them, and particularly those who are under served by more popular tech stack/languages, for example grassroots communities. They’re both kind of a “secret” weapon to prototype and deliver agile solutions to clients and communities. I have packaged some of them using TW in 2009 and will be doing that by combining both technologies this year (I’ll share more details when they’re ready). I think also the the TWPub is a far superior format for active annotated and connected reading, and a good example of how to provide improvements on qualitative experience instead of looking for the quantitative approach.
So I agree with @TW_Tones and @Mohammad about different paths for TW success stories, not related with popularity or replacing what is already there, but with providing consultancy and community advantages for more meaningful and qualitative differences for adopters/developers. As long as the communities around those technologies keep vibrant and evolving to provide support and agency to the members in their different endeavors, I don’t care about big numbers.