In todays world a distinction between Smalltalk and a Lisp listener is remote connectivity. Lisp needs a simple socket, whereas Smalltalk requires the full GUI.

I can certainly be mistaken but I don’t know if you can connect a typical modern Smalltalk workspace to a remote image. Nothing to stop someone from whipping up a straightforward socket listener to a ST image, but it’s not at all the same thing as what the desktop experience is.

Obviously not impossible just a distinction between them.

ST also solves the disparity between the image and the source code by logging all changes made to an image automatically. So it’s straightforward to roll forward an older image to a recent state by replaying the changes file.