I think its implementation via virtual machine was quite influential, too. While the graphics in Smalltalk-80 look painfully dated, it's quite clear the language was far ahead of its time, and many languages people encounter these days could be considered third-generation knockoffs of Smalltalk (often with an Algol parent). It has a really clean conceptual design, and it gets quite a bit of expressive power from being able to pass around lazily evaluated blocks of code.

In hindsight I'm not sure that its design as a fully self-contained / relatively isolated system is a good idea, but the core semantics of the language make a lot of sense. OO is a better paradigm for some problems than others, but Smalltalk has a far more sensible vision of OO than those grafted onto C's type system, and I would recommend people play with it over reading endless rehashing of _Design Patterns_. (Smalltalk is to OO as Haskell is to FP.)

Also:

> The questioner also adds:

> "For the record: I'm a Ruby guy with little to no experience in Smalltalk, but I'm starting to wonder why."

> The answer: because you look to anonymous crowds on social networking sites for approval when you should just follow your curiousity and see where it leads.

Burn.