# Smalltalk 70 Hacker News commenters recommended Smalltalk and 23 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Recommended for its live, image-based environment with a browser, debugger and edit-compile-continue that speeds programming. Critics cite the image model's fragility and limited adoption. ## Why people recommend it - High programmer productivity and thought-to-code ratio (4 comments): "The development experience while using the environment, the debugger, edit-compile-continue, REPL with suggestions for typos, dynamic code loading." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49988671)) "found the Smalltalk way of working in the running environment to be very programmer efficient" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825962)) "The programming environment was fantastic, better than anything I have seen before or since." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45830531)) - Inspect and change code while running (4 comments): "where the entire IDE (or really the whole operating system) could have open heart surgery done on it while it was running" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48731843)) "it brings me back to the days of working in Smalltalk image where I can tweak my development IDE as I go along" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49372754)) "one thing I love about Smalltalk is being able to inspect the code as it's running" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245611)) - Robust image-based development model (3 comments): "Just restore unsaved changes when you launch the same image again. That's robust not fragile." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45829427)) "the most impressive part of Smalltalk ecosystem is the structure of the image" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825195)) "Image-based systems are no reason to abandon good engineering practices." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827855)) - Pure, consistent, orthogonal language design (2 comments): "It's incredibly pure - almost all of the syntax is "send this message to this object"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245840)) "Smalltalk is the ultimate orthogonal language - everything is consistent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45829683)) ## What people warn about - Easy to brick the running system (3 comments): "I have fond memories of bricking my Smalltalk environment several times trying to get instance behaviour working" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48732083)) "it's incredibly easy to brick your system when it's all a network of objects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45828169)) "Pretty sure ST-80 doesn’t even mandate recovery features, which is pretty scary" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45840311)) - Image model limited its appeal (2 comments): "The image concept, in my opinion, is what really limited Smalltalk's appeal and distribution." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826078)) "it also was/is one of the major impediments for Smalltalk, at least after the mid 1980s." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827292)) - Syntax worse than Ruby and Python (2 comments): "Syntax-wise Smalltalk is a huge set back and step back compared to Ruby" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826522)) "Smalltalk didn't understand that. The syntax is worse than python IMO" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826562)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend - [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend - [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend - [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend - [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Smalltalk", https://hackerapproved.com/p/smalltalk/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).