Pharo looks like a blast from the past in a good way. It harkens back to the era when a lot of work was put into carefully designing language, IDE, and UI/UX environments cohesively with an eye toward using the computer to maximize human capability and productivity.

Then we dumped all that and abandoned it and moved to today's visually and ergonomically inconsistent hodge podge. It mostly happened because of the web but also because the velocity of the industry increased to the point that it felt like a waste of time to think deeply about anything. It'll just be obsolete next year. Slap it together, get it out the door, repeat.