> But, let's contrast it to Java, which pretty much is in the same boat as a modern Smalltalk. A very large core system of packages, classes, and methods.
Java is used in many places. Smalltalk is not. The whole comparison falls short due to this already. TIOBE ranks Java #4 right now, which is not too bad, even though TIOBE also sucks.
Popularity is irrelevant here.