4 ms·

> I'm sorry that I long ago coined the term "objects" for this topic because it gets many people to focus on the lesser idea. > The big idea is "messaging" - t

> I'm sorry that I long ago coined the term "objects" for this topic because it gets many people to focus on the lesser idea. > The big idea is "messaging" - that is what the kernal of Smalltalk/Squeak is all about (and it's something that was never quite completed in our Xerox PARC phase). The Japanese have a small word - ma - for "that which is in between" - perhaps the nearest English equivalent is "interstitial". The key in making great and growable systems is much more to design how its modules communicate rather than what their internal properties and behaviors should be. https://wiki.c2.com/?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented https://wiki.c2.com/?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented

svat 6y ago
Well, regarding that quote (interesting no doubt), see some important caveats at https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/alan-kay/ https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/alan-kay/ which goes into some detail on evolving views about OOP (including that quote). It turns out that Alan Kay did not coin the term “objects”, though he did coin “object-oriented programming”, but even in Smalltalk, messages were only one idea of three: the post concludes that “OOP consisted of three major ideas: classes that defined protocol and implementation, objects as instances of classes, and messages as the means of communication.”