What you mean is, why can't you take everything that makes Smalltalk great away, and make it work like every other file based language. The answer is, because then it would suck.
As I mentioned above, Smalltalk is also file-based; when you distribute a smalltalk program source, you distribute a set of source text files.
Just like any other typical programming language.
What Smalltalk does is not remotely what you do in other languages and when we say file based we're referring to that difference, file oriented programming vs image oriented programming.
A Smalltalk program is not a collection of files one works with, it doesn't fit into the standard file based workflow, you cannot without jumping through many hoops, work on a Smalltalk program from your standard editor using your standard unix tools and file based workflow. So when we say file based, it's this we're referring to, do not lie to people and claim Smalltalk is file based, it is not. Smalltalk is image based, you work with its dev tools on a running object model in an image; having the option to export that to a file after the fact is not remotely the same as being file based; that the image stores source code in a changes file, or that we share code between each other with st exports does not a file based language make.
St files by the way are a serialization format, they are not meant to be hand editable and are not treated as such and contain all kinds of non-Smalltalk stuff related to the serialization format; we don't edit st files and compile them, we edit in the image and import/export st files to share code between images.
I'm a Lisper, i do know what Image-based development is, because that's what I use*
You're misunderstanding Smalltalk, probably because of hype mongers like the author of this article. Source is text files as usual. This is not the same as the image. Your environment, and the compiled classes, are contained in the image, but the IDE also keeps the source, text files.
>St files by the way are a serialization format, they are not meant to be hand editable and are not treated as such and contain all kinds
.st __source__ files are text files. You are confusing them with the image files.
Don't tell me what I'm thinking and because of who, I make my living with Smalltalk (Squeak and now Pharo) and have for well over a decade and have done hundreds of millions in revenue through my Smalltalk apps.
> .st source files are text files.
I didn't say they weren't, they're still a plain text serialization format that is not directly what Smalltalk looks like and we still don't work on code by editing those files.
> You are confusing them with the image files.
No I'm not, if you actually read what I wrote, you'd see that.
Lisp is not Smalltalk, do not confuse how Lisp does image based development with how Smalltalk does it; they are not the same. When you have a few years experience actually working with Smalltalk doing production level stuff, then come talk to me, right now you're repeating nonsense that you're inferring based on apparently some light reading and no actual experience in the culture of and use of an actual Smalltalk.
If your image crashes it gets reconstructed from those two files.
It would be great if you Smalltalk fans would explain its source handling in these terms above, instead of promoting "image based" as some sort of magic where there aren't any text files, because in this forum some programmers are getting (needlessly) scared about the image-based system and (needlessly) fearing it.
The .changes and .sources text files are maintained in-the-background by the IDE and kept in-sync with the image file.
With that comment, you lost any good will I had for you. Despite that, I tried to explain to you anyway what we mean by file based and you simply ignored it and chose to argue with me about st files being plain text which is entirely irrelevant to the conversation. What more do you want? You're wrong, Smalltalk isn't file based, but you don't seem to know what Smalltalk'ers mean by that term, and you refuse to admit you're wrong despite you not even being a Smalltalker. That's willful ignorance, I have no patience for willful ignorance nor do I have any duty to the Smalltalk community, something I know vastly more about than you as I've been a member of it for a very very long time.