4 ms·

Well Lisp and Smalltalk were designed for two entirely different purposes and audiences[1] so of course they were trying to jettison everything they could and k

by blihp 8y ago

Well Lisp and Smalltalk were designed for two entirely different purposes and audiences[1] so of course they were trying to jettison everything they could and keep things absolutely as simple as possible in Smalltalk. That doesn't mean that what was jettisoned didn't have value[2] in the right circumstances or hands, just that it wasn't appropriate for the needs of their project. Trying to do some things in Smalltalk without either something as rich as macros or as basic as a preprocessor can be downright painful at times. [1] Lisp as a mathematical notation for computation vs. Smalltalk as a programming language primarily targeting children. [2] Some of what they ended up doing in the STEPS project with DSLs looks very much to me like a rethinking and attempt to get even more leverage than what macros provide. In a way it was working toward 'computing for adults' that I've heard Alan refer to in several talks that was never the focus with Smalltalk.

mpweiher 8y ago
> Lisp and Smalltalk were designed for two entirely different purposes and audiences > Smalltalk as a programming language primarily targeting children. Not entirely sure that is right. See The Early History Of Smalltalk[1] 'One day, in a typical PARC hallway bullsession, Ted Kaehler, Dan Ingalls, and I were standing around talking about programming languages. The subject of power came up and the two of them wondered how large a language one would have to make to get great power. With as much panache as I could muster, I asserted that you could define the "most powerful language in the world" in "a page of code." They said, "Put up or shut up."' 'I had originally made the boast because McCarthy's self-describing LISP interpreter was written in itself. It was about "a page", and as far as power goes, LISP was the whole nine-yards for functional languages. I was quite sure I could do the same for object-oriented languages plus be able to do a reasonable syntax for the code a la some of the FLEX machine techniques.' 'It turned out to be more difficult than I had first thought for three reasons. First, I wanted the program to be more like McCarthy's second non-recursive interpreter—the one implemented as a loop that tried to resemble the original 709 implementation of Steve Russell as much as possible. It was more "real". Second, the intertwining of the "parsing" with message receipt—the evaluation of parameters which was handled separately in LISP—required that my object-oriented interpreter re-enter itself "sooner" (in fact, much sooner) than LISP required. And, finally, I was still not clear how send and receive should work with each other.' [1] http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/
- blihp 8y ago
  You are correct regarding the initial concept, but what were the objectives of the Learning Resource Group that Alan Kay was leading at the time? And what were the various iterations of Smalltalk (i.e. -72 through -80) working towards? Squeak? Etoys? Croquet? (etc.) Alan has been pretty explicit in every paper and presentation I've seen from him: his career has been very much focused on computing as it applied to childhood education and development.[1] Of course Smalltalk is also an incredibly powerful language and still one of the better ones for adults to use IMO. But when push came to shove, the language design decisions were at least biased toward, if not explicitly based on what would work for children. [1] Which is both profound and enlightened because in the same breath he'll say he didn't really care about educating children... he just wanted to help make better adults.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    "Although Smalltalk-80 is not meant to be used by children, application programs can be written that will allow them to be creative and, at the same time, learn about programming." Is the Smalltalk- System for Children?, Byte, 6(8), August 1981. 3. Adele Goldberg , Steven T. Abell , David Leibs https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08
    - blihp 8y ago
      Keep in mind that was at a time when Adele was working to commercialize Smalltalk in the real world[1] eventually as a business venture selling to businesses (i.e. ParcPlace Systems) so there was more than a little bit of spin involved. (especially given the writing, photo and video evidence to the contrary from the 70's with Adele in-frame :-) Also, look back at the Early History link from your first post and you'll find 'children' mentioned 35 times including this quote: 'and a language I now called "Smalltalk"—as in "programming should be a matter of ..." and "children should program in ..."' [1] If I'm not mistaken the only reason Squeak and its derivatives even exist today was that during this time, as Xerox was trying to figure out what to do with what PARC produced, Apple received one of the handful of the Smalltalk-80 Version 1 licenses. IIRC, the Version 2 license was more restrictive and wouldn't have let Apple do what it did in terms of open sourcing Smalltalk. Notice that there was never a Smalltalk-82 etc... virtually all future work came from the commercial side until Squeak came along.

by blihp 8y ago

mpweiher 8y ago

> Lisp and Smalltalk were designed for two entirely different purposes and audiences > Smalltalk as a programming language primarily targeting children. Not entirely sure that is right. See The Early History Of Smalltalk[1] 'One day, in a typical PARC hallway bullsession, Ted Kaehler, Dan Ingalls, and I were standing around talking about programming languages. The subject of power came up and the two of them wondered how large a language one would have to make to get great power. With as much panache as I could muster, I asserted that you could define the "most powerful language in the world" in "a page of code." They said, "Put up or shut up."' 'I had originally made the boast because McCarthy's self-describing LISP interpreter was written in itself. It was about "a page", and as far as power goes, LISP was the whole nine-yards for functional languages. I was quite sure I could do the same for object-oriented languages plus be able to do a reasonable syntax for the code a la some of the FLEX machine techniques.' 'It turned out to be more difficult than I had first thought for three reasons. First, I wanted the program to be more like McCarthy's second non-recursive interpreter—the one implemented as a loop that tried to resemble the original 709 implementation of Steve Russell as much as possible. It was more "real". Second, the intertwining of the "parsing" with message receipt—the evaluation of parameters which was handled separately in LISP—required that my object-oriented interpreter re-enter itself "sooner" (in fact, much sooner) than LISP required. And, finally, I was still not clear how send and receive should work with each other.' [1] http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/

blihp 8y ago
You are correct regarding the initial concept, but what were the objectives of the Learning Resource Group that Alan Kay was leading at the time? And what were the various iterations of Smalltalk (i.e. -72 through -80) working towards? Squeak? Etoys? Croquet? (etc.) Alan has been pretty explicit in every paper and presentation I've seen from him: his career has been very much focused on computing as it applied to childhood education and development.[1] Of course Smalltalk is also an incredibly powerful language and still one of the better ones for adults to use IMO. But when push came to shove, the language design decisions were at least biased toward, if not explicitly based on what would work for children. [1] Which is both profound and enlightened because in the same breath he'll say he didn't really care about educating children... he just wanted to help make better adults.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  "Although Smalltalk-80 is not meant to be used by children, application programs can be written that will allow them to be creative and, at the same time, learn about programming." Is the Smalltalk- System for Children?, Byte, 6(8), August 1981. 3. Adele Goldberg , Steven T. Abell , David Leibs https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08
  - blihp 8y ago
    Keep in mind that was at a time when Adele was working to commercialize Smalltalk in the real world[1] eventually as a business venture selling to businesses (i.e. ParcPlace Systems) so there was more than a little bit of spin involved. (especially given the writing, photo and video evidence to the contrary from the 70's with Adele in-frame :-) Also, look back at the Early History link from your first post and you'll find 'children' mentioned 35 times including this quote: 'and a language I now called "Smalltalk"—as in "programming should be a matter of ..." and "children should program in ..."' [1] If I'm not mistaken the only reason Squeak and its derivatives even exist today was that during this time, as Xerox was trying to figure out what to do with what PARC produced, Apple received one of the handful of the Smalltalk-80 Version 1 licenses. IIRC, the Version 2 license was more restrictive and wouldn't have let Apple do what it did in terms of open sourcing Smalltalk. Notice that there was never a Smalltalk-82 etc... virtually all future work came from the commercial side until Squeak came along.