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Funny how smalltalk was one of the first object oriented language, and Kay is among the inventors of object oriented programming, and yet the vision is complete

by bsaul 8y ago

Funny how smalltalk was one of the first object oriented language, and Kay is among the inventors of object oriented programming, and yet the vision is completely opposed to the concept of encapsulation (which is one of today's core principle of OOP). Aka: to provide a simple interface to manipulate an object, rather than expose its internals.

bsdetector 8y ago
That's because Smalltalk's real invention was the term "object oriented". The C++/Java/C# family of objects favoring encapsulation and interfaces started with Simula 67 before Smalltalk. It's actually amazing how much Simula looks like a modern object language, for example it has a direct analog to Java's inner class. Not much has really changed in terms of concepts. The story of Smalltalk is really a story about marketing: it's a simple and pretty model that's easy to tell so people lionize it. The reality is that almost all successful object languages used in industry are based on the Simula model not Smalltalk.
- mark_l_watson 8y ago
  +1 right on! I have some experience with Simula 67 (in the mid 1970s, as a young programmer I was tasked with converting a large Simula application to FORTRAN. After building up FORTAN from the bottom, it was easy enough to do, but it was painful to convert something elegant to an uglier form just so it would run on our in house computer). I totally missed the significance of Simula before your comment.
igouy 8y ago
> …the vision is completely opposed to the concept of encapsulation… Why do you think that? p.286 Design Principles Behind Smalltalk [author Daniel H H ingalls] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08
- jecel 8y ago
  To reinforce your point: Alan Kay majored in both Computer Science and Molecular Biology and the cell membrane was a significant inspiration for objects. It completely isolates the inner chemical functions from the rest of the world. So encapsulation was the first thing Alan worried about.
- bsaul 8y ago
  I’m not talking about smalltalk’s vision as a programming language but rather the operating system exposing the source of every component in read / write mode.
  - igouy 8y ago
    That is not what you wrote.

by bsaul 8y ago

bsdetector 8y ago

That's because Smalltalk's real invention was the term "object oriented". The C++/Java/C# family of objects favoring encapsulation and interfaces started with Simula 67 before Smalltalk. It's actually amazing how much Simula looks like a modern object language, for example it has a direct analog to Java's inner class. Not much has really changed in terms of concepts. The story of Smalltalk is really a story about marketing: it's a simple and pretty model that's easy to tell so people lionize it. The reality is that almost all successful object languages used in industry are based on the Simula model not Smalltalk.

mark_l_watson 8y ago
+1 right on! I have some experience with Simula 67 (in the mid 1970s, as a young programmer I was tasked with converting a large Simula application to FORTRAN. After building up FORTAN from the bottom, it was easy enough to do, but it was painful to convert something elegant to an uglier form just so it would run on our in house computer). I totally missed the significance of Simula before your comment.

igouy 8y ago

> …the vision is completely opposed to the concept of encapsulation… Why do you think that? p.286 Design Principles Behind Smalltalk [author Daniel H H ingalls] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08

jecel 8y ago
To reinforce your point: Alan Kay majored in both Computer Science and Molecular Biology and the cell membrane was a significant inspiration for objects. It completely isolates the inner chemical functions from the rest of the world. So encapsulation was the first thing Alan worried about.
bsaul 8y ago
I’m not talking about smalltalk’s vision as a programming language but rather the operating system exposing the source of every component in read / write mode.
- igouy 8y ago
  That is not what you wrote.