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I am giving a talk in work soon around method swizzling in iOS and was delving into the history of Objective-C a bit and came across Alan Kay's talk about the p

by AJRF 6y ago

I am giving a talk in work soon around method swizzling in iOS and was delving into the history of Objective-C a bit and came across Alan Kay's talk about the power of simplicity and how we've all screwed up OOP. In the talk, Alan talks about the ant who lives his life on a single plane of existence, the "Gulley World" or "Reality". The ant goes to work, he finds stuff to eat, he lives his life in this Gulley World, which is depicted as a pink 2D plane. However some times on this pink plane there are little spots of blue. They represent thoughts that don't belong in the pink plane. Sometimes those blue spots turn into blue planes, and the ant we are following starts to move along that plane instead of the pink one. Everyone in the pink plane thinks he is wrong. Everyone can see the pink plane, in all its reality. It is not until you walk on the blue plane until you can see "another way". The metaphor being that we developers built a world where we started to take the general idea of OOP and construct a lot of "reality" around it. A lot of process, a lot of formalization so we could build mechanical systems of gears that slotted together. I think Alan's idea of OOP was something more fluid, more organic than this. The world is messy and we often try to abstract the mess away in these overbearingly weighty and hierarchical programs that everyone agrees is the right way. I think Objective-C was the most widely used and successful walk on this blue plane. Millions of developers were exposed to the idea of message passing as a form of OOP, which is an astounding accomplishment. It really is a neat language, and I had a lot of fun learning it. Brad definitely walked on the blue plane. RIP.

prabhatjha 6y ago
What a great tribute you have written. When I first found about swizzling through a seasoned iOS dev I was blown away. The swizzling capability in obj-c basically helped create my first startup, InstaOps, a long time back which allowed no code change to instrument an app to capture logs and network performance metrics.
- neverartful 6y ago
  I second all of these comments. I was on the same team with him (Hi Prabhat, this is Paul D.) and concur that swizzling is a very powerful mechanism. It's definitely a good thing to know about if you're working with Objective-C.
captainclam 6y ago
"I think Alan's idea of OOP was something more fluid, more organic than this." I've heard a good deal about Alan Kay's dissent of the state of OOP, but I've never seen a concise summary of his vision or the principles that Kay's 'ideal' realization of OOP would adhere to. Does such a resource exist, written by Kay himself or otherwise? Or do I just need to go play around with Obj C or Smalltalk to really "get it?"
- AJRF 6y ago
  Here he discusses his thoughts on the term; http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...
- astrange 6y ago
  He did an AMA here once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851
- lostcolony 6y ago
  But, yes, you really need to play around with one to 'get it'. Or at least, get why the other languages fail to really uphold the goal. Per the original anecdote, being told "it's all blue!" isn't that impressive when you've seen the spots of blue and shrugged them off as just normal little detours amongst the pink, and can't imagine everything being blue. You have to see it for yourself.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >I've heard a good deal about Alan Kay's dissent of the state of OOP, but I've never seen a concise summary of his vision or the principles that Kay's 'ideal' realization of OOP would adhere to. Smalltalk 76-like...
coldtea 6y ago
>Brad definitely walked on the blue plane. RIP. Your/Alan's "blue plane" analogy remindeded me of this: They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/blueguitar.html https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/blueguitar.html

by AJRF 6y ago

prabhatjha 6y ago

What a great tribute you have written. When I first found about swizzling through a seasoned iOS dev I was blown away. The swizzling capability in obj-c basically helped create my first startup, InstaOps, a long time back which allowed no code change to instrument an app to capture logs and network performance metrics.

neverartful 6y ago
I second all of these comments. I was on the same team with him (Hi Prabhat, this is Paul D.) and concur that swizzling is a very powerful mechanism. It's definitely a good thing to know about if you're working with Objective-C.

captainclam 6y ago

"I think Alan's idea of OOP was something more fluid, more organic than this." I've heard a good deal about Alan Kay's dissent of the state of OOP, but I've never seen a concise summary of his vision or the principles that Kay's 'ideal' realization of OOP would adhere to. Does such a resource exist, written by Kay himself or otherwise? Or do I just need to go play around with Obj C or Smalltalk to really "get it?"

AJRF 6y ago
Here he discusses his thoughts on the term; http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...
astrange 6y ago
He did an AMA here once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851
lostcolony 6y ago
But, yes, you really need to play around with one to 'get it'. Or at least, get why the other languages fail to really uphold the goal. Per the original anecdote, being told "it's all blue!" isn't that impressive when you've seen the spots of blue and shrugged them off as just normal little detours amongst the pink, and can't imagine everything being blue. You have to see it for yourself.
coldtea 6y ago
>I've heard a good deal about Alan Kay's dissent of the state of OOP, but I've never seen a concise summary of his vision or the principles that Kay's 'ideal' realization of OOP would adhere to. Smalltalk 76-like...

coldtea 6y ago

>Brad definitely walked on the blue plane. RIP. Your/Alan's "blue plane" analogy remindeded me of this: They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/blueguitar.html https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/blueguitar.html