The difference between smalltalk and the rest

Smalltalk programs are ecosystems.

A program behaves like an ecosystem when the focus is put on run time - not compile time. This is a major shift.

People coming from static languages complain that Smalltalk doesn't have Netbeans, Eclipse or whatever. Smalltalk - and potentially other dynamic languages - has something different.

Smalltalk provides an environment where you can edit, run and analyze code in real time. Imagine being able to grow a program. Imagine being able observe it grow. Imagine being able to painlessly debug and analyze it. This is what it means to focus on run time.

This is hard to understand if you're coding in a glorified notepad.

When you're coding in Smalltalk your program is running persistently in the background. It is alive. Inspecting it is just a click away. When you create an object, you can actually right-click on it and get a list of it's methods. You can just as easily change the implementations of these methods. Without restarting anything.

It's a major cultural shift. Smalltalk programmers never fight the compiler, they spend their time debugging their programs. This is a different way of developing a program.

Don't trust me. Take 2 minutes and see something interesting.