5 ms·

Common ones I hear: - He hasn't shipped anything popular (he's a researcher, expanding the tree of knowledge, not an engineer optimizing for shipping) - Smallt

Common ones I hear: - He hasn't shipped anything popular (he's a researcher, expanding the tree of knowledge, not an engineer optimizing for shipping) - Smalltalk isn't as great as Alan makes it out to be (again he's a researcher) - That the computer revolution has happened but he's stuck in the 70's - Many, many more things

romwell 8y ago
Being stuck in the 70's isn't that bad, many avantgarde things from that era still have to make it to mainstream adoption.
- poulsbohemian 8y ago
  I watched a presentation on YouTube that Christopher Alexander did in 1996, talking about work he did in the 70s and it continued to amaze me at its relevance today. +1 to you for realizing there are still a lot of good, under appreciated ideas out there and that technology actually moves super slow.
  - nerpderp83 8y ago
    Computer tech folks have this stronger than healthy equation of new == good, old is wrong, needing replacement. Just because we do something doesn't make a better idea than ideas we had in the past that are not being used. There are lots of dead great ideas.
- jakecopp 8y ago
  Could I ask you what these are?
poulsbohemian 8y ago
FWIW: I used Smalltalk a bit in college and then for about a year professionally, about four years into a now twenty year career. I've shipped software in about five languages over my career and have never again come anywhere close to as productive as I was during that time using Smalltalk. Ironically, the work environment at that time was perhaps the worst of my career but Smalltalk just makes it so darn easy to crank out functionality and test it at the same time. So, sure it is old but there's a lot we could still learn from it.
- woah 8y ago
  If it’s so great, why isn’t it used in industry? Cranking out functionality is what everyone wants. As someone who has never seen or used it, I always hear about how all these languages are inspired by smalltalk but just don’t get it right or whatever. Why doesn’t somebody do a straight up port of it if it’s that great?
  - sirclueless 8y ago
    I think people who say other languages "just don't get it right" are living in a fantasy world. At the end of the day, Smalltalk is a pretty extreme language. The insistence that, e.g., every integer value is an object that can be sent messages, or that every code block is an object, or that every code block can introspect its caller, all lead to a pretty extreme amount of flexibility but an inability to write efficient code or do much optimization. At the end of the day, languages that were less extreme won the popularity contest. Ruby and Python, for example, are just more accessible and full-featured.
    - PinkMilkshake 8y ago
      People unfamiliar with history live in a fantasy world. Smalltalk or more specifically one of it's dialects, Self (an even more "extreme" Smalltalk), made huge advances in JIT compilation. Advances which later ended up in the Java HotSpot virtual machine. Some benchmarks hit half the performance of optimized C. That was in the late 90s.
      - scroot 8y ago
        I'd say more of a dystopia than a fantasy world
    - emp 8y ago
      I believe the Squeak/Pharo VMs are much faster than the Python and Ruby interpreters. There are other tricks - an Int maybe be an object, but a special one that fits in a register. The part that other languages don’t get is it’s the Smalltalk environment that makes it special, and there is just nothing like it in our modern tooling.
ballenf 8y ago
Are those criticisms in response to claims of his otherwise? Does he blame current problems programmers have on not listening to him more? Or make some other critical claims to trigger what kind of sound like ad hominem* responses? I will google these questions also, but am always interested the HN crowd's take. Like the original question I didn't know he'd ruffled any feathers. Edit: top hit was Alan Kay himself addressing criticism on a Quora question: https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-criticized-Alan-Kay https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-criticized-Alan-Kay, but on further read it obliquely addresses criticisms other than his role in developing OOP.
ranit 8y ago
You made me curious. Do you have any links to the criticism you quote?

romwell 8y ago

Being stuck in the 70's isn't that bad, many avantgarde things from that era still have to make it to mainstream adoption.

poulsbohemian 8y ago
I watched a presentation on YouTube that Christopher Alexander did in 1996, talking about work he did in the 70s and it continued to amaze me at its relevance today. +1 to you for realizing there are still a lot of good, under appreciated ideas out there and that technology actually moves super slow.
- nerpderp83 8y ago
  Computer tech folks have this stronger than healthy equation of new == good, old is wrong, needing replacement. Just because we do something doesn't make a better idea than ideas we had in the past that are not being used. There are lots of dead great ideas.
jakecopp 8y ago
Could I ask you what these are?

poulsbohemian 8y ago

FWIW: I used Smalltalk a bit in college and then for about a year professionally, about four years into a now twenty year career. I've shipped software in about five languages over my career and have never again come anywhere close to as productive as I was during that time using Smalltalk. Ironically, the work environment at that time was perhaps the worst of my career but Smalltalk just makes it so darn easy to crank out functionality and test it at the same time. So, sure it is old but there's a lot we could still learn from it.

woah 8y ago
If it’s so great, why isn’t it used in industry? Cranking out functionality is what everyone wants. As someone who has never seen or used it, I always hear about how all these languages are inspired by smalltalk but just don’t get it right or whatever. Why doesn’t somebody do a straight up port of it if it’s that great?
- sirclueless 8y ago
  I think people who say other languages "just don't get it right" are living in a fantasy world. At the end of the day, Smalltalk is a pretty extreme language. The insistence that, e.g., every integer value is an object that can be sent messages, or that every code block is an object, or that every code block can introspect its caller, all lead to a pretty extreme amount of flexibility but an inability to write efficient code or do much optimization. At the end of the day, languages that were less extreme won the popularity contest. Ruby and Python, for example, are just more accessible and full-featured.
  - PinkMilkshake 8y ago
    People unfamiliar with history live in a fantasy world. Smalltalk or more specifically one of it's dialects, Self (an even more "extreme" Smalltalk), made huge advances in JIT compilation. Advances which later ended up in the Java HotSpot virtual machine. Some benchmarks hit half the performance of optimized C. That was in the late 90s.
    - scroot 8y ago
      I'd say more of a dystopia than a fantasy world
  - emp 8y ago
    I believe the Squeak/Pharo VMs are much faster than the Python and Ruby interpreters. There are other tricks - an Int maybe be an object, but a special one that fits in a register. The part that other languages don’t get is it’s the Smalltalk environment that makes it special, and there is just nothing like it in our modern tooling.

ballenf 8y ago

Are those criticisms in response to claims of his otherwise? Does he blame current problems programmers have on not listening to him more? Or make some other critical claims to trigger what kind of sound like ad hominem* responses? I will google these questions also, but am always interested the HN crowd's take. Like the original question I didn't know he'd ruffled any feathers. Edit: top hit was Alan Kay himself addressing criticism on a Quora question: https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-criticized-Alan-Kay https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-criticized-Alan-Kay, but on further read it obliquely addresses criticisms other than his role in developing OOP.

ranit 8y ago

You made me curious. Do you have any links to the criticism you quote?