It&#x27;s useful in education, but it also was competitive in what became the Java market.  Weirdly, the world bought into a relatively static language when it had the option to go for the extremely dynamic and flexible SmallTalk instead.  I have always thought it an extreme shame that the man-centuries (man-millennia?) sunk into improving the JVM weren&#x27;t instead spent improving an open-source SmallTalk instead.