Sharing those changes was never that easy. Because it was encouraged to make additions and even changes to the base classes along with the project, we would inevitably end up with clashes. A typical scenario was filing in one programmers changes, then a second set of changes only to find they didn’t work together requiring a 3rd set of changes to be produced. Rinse and repeat in a big team and you’ve lost all the benefits of Smalltalk in hideous merges.

The change sets did not have hash based versioning or anything like that, so we tried cramming entire classes into SCCS or PVCS which kinda worked but quickly got unmanageable as base class extensions grew.

The Smalltalk change sets were fine for tracking one programmers work but quickly multiplied into a giant headache in any team.

> encouraged to make additions and even changes to the base classes

By whom?

"Guideline 120 Avoid modifying the existing behavior of base system classes."

1996 Smalltalk with Style page 95

https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/FreeBooks/WithStyle/Smallt...

You had to be there. Those books were not available when I was using Smalltalk and not all programmers really “got” the system or the implications of their changes on their team.

You must have been a very early user, this was published in 1984 —

"At the outset of a project involving two or more programmers: Do assign a member of the team to be the version manager. … The responsibilities of the version manager consist of collecting and cataloging code files submitted by all members of the team, periodically building a new system image incorporating all submitted code files, and releasing the image for use by the team. The version manager stores the current release and all code files for that release in a central place, allowing team members read access, and disallowing write access for anyone except the version manager." (page 500)

1984 "Smalltalk-80 The Interactive Programming Environment"

https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractivePr...

Without a defined software development process, that everyone habitually uses, we can usually make "a tangled mess of code" with any programming language.

You do know the difference between citing a book and actually being there might be, right?

Yes, we can all verify what's written.

I didn't use Smalltalk until 1988, so there was at-least the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others.