> But it's always depressed me that nearly forty years later, our high-tech and ultrafast dynamic languages still cannot hold a candle to Smalltalk for clarity, simplicity and usability.

You're aware that these are extremely subjective attributes, right?

Most people not using Smalltalk (or who tried it and decided to not use it) will argue that Smalltalk is anything but clear, simple or even usable (seriously, even Pharos or Squeak have the usability of late 90s IDE's).

And of course, there's the fact that Smalltalk is dynamically typed, a class of languages that's fast headed for extinction.