> But, let's contrast it to Java, which pretty much is in the same boat as a modern Smalltalk. A very large core system of packages, classes, and methods.
Java is used in many places. Smalltalk is not. The whole comparison falls short due to this already. TIOBE ranks Java #4 right now, which is not too bad, even though TIOBE also sucks.
Only because big Smalltalk shops like IBM, decided to pivot into Java, to this day Eclipse keeps many artifacts form its Visual Age roots.
Popularity is irrelevant here.