In the case of C/C++ you may have had different compilers and tools, but the vendors never went off-spec once the ANSI standard was established, did they? I mean, you never saw Borland put out "C, with namespaces!" or anything like that (that I'm aware of).

BTW, I may have gotten the jist of the thread backwards. I thought they were clamoring for features in Seaside that aren't part of ANSI Smalltalk (established in 1998 - I had to look it up). But, I think my overall concerns still stand.

The general vibe I get is that the Smalltalk vendors are willing to "stray from the spec", as it were, and implement not only non-standard features, but re-implement some of the core internals in different ways, e.g. some versions of Smalltalk support native threads, some don't.

But, yeah, maybe I'm worrying over nothing. It has made me reconsider the whole "We need a spec" issue, instead of just relying on tests for the spec. On the other hand, that puts a crimp in my whole "Wuby" plan. ;)