Cincom only acquired the VisualWorks Smalltalk software after ParcPlace had unsuccessfully rebranded as ObjectShare in response to the emergence of free as in beer Java.
ParcPlace acquired competitor Digitalk and tried to create a Frankenstein hybrid - jigsaw? - that royally screwed things up.
Around the time, the industry was very exercised about a number of features that alledgedly made PP Smalltalk bad:
- non-native widgets (emulated) for windows - who cares now;
- principal deployment as a single process, not natively multi-threaded, using internal virtual threads - which actually scales better;
- must be able to run in the browser like java applets - :-)
- can't get my head round "image" model, must have individual files
This was all FUD. Developing in VisualWorks with Envy (Gemstone) centralised version control was a blissful experience I haven't seen bettered.
But yes, Smalltalk and C++ faced off in industry for a number of years for the crown and then along came Java on the OSS tidal wave that effectively destroyed the business model for VisualWorks that relied on expensive licences.
Ironically the whole way modern IDEs work with virtual filesystems, or the LSP approach, aren't much different than putting an image like layer on top of traditional filesystems.
And still don't have quite a C++ IDE experience that somehow comes close to Visual Age for C++ v4 (from Smalltalk side), or Energize C++ (from Lisp side).
Cincom only acquired the VisualWorks Smalltalk software after ParcPlace had unsuccessfully rebranded as ObjectShare in response to the emergence of free as in beer Java.