12 ms·

He has been pretty clear in giving a lot of credit to the inventors of Simula, but that at the same his ideas derive more from Lisp. He even has a Quora answer

He has been pretty clear in giving a lot of credit to the inventors of Simula, but that at the same his ideas derive more from Lisp. He even has a Quora answer where he explains that Lisp is the greatest language because he views it as a big shift in thinking. There is also a well known clear answer of his to the question of what is OOP to him. We ended up with something different in real life, but it's pretty silly to accuse somebody of stealing an idea and giving it a name, when they wanted to do something else. If anything, the name OO was "stolen" to refer to something not originally intended. But even in this case the word steal is too harsh, and your general style leaves a really bad impression.

ncmncm 5y ago
On some people, Alan Kay's territorial claims to others' ideas leave a bad impression. Nobody begrudges him (with Dan Ingalls) Smalltalk, which represents a serious material improvement over Lisp syntax. But it looks like sour grapes to complain about C++, a language designed by a grad student of Kristen Nygaard that found success in industrial applications. Practical reasons for that success—independent programs that run at native-machine speed, using native-machine data representations, and intimately compatible with an existing, successful industrial language—were chosen with careful deliberation, leaving certain Lisp strengths—particularly, function literals—aside, for later. It seemed like the right approach, at the time, and turned out to be. Java could have been the practical Smalltalk, but its designers elected instead to ape superficial details of C++, for no defensible reasons, to Java's detriment. The good ideas in Smalltalk have not had much effect on the world. All of Smalltalk's weaknesses were inherited directly from Lisp, leaving it with no better prospects than Lisp has had, or has, for identically the same reasons. But it turns out the "object orientation", like any other exclusive organizational principle, is an inadequate basis for a language meant for broad use. So, C++ supports OO and other styles, and even Java has begun to branch out. Subsequent development of C++ has drawn mainly upon ML, fleshing out support for other organizational styles that Smalltalk and Lisp never attempted. And, it got lambdas, after all.
- locallost 5y ago
  I've seen a couple of his talks and read some of his comments here and elsewhere. I've never seen any territorial claims, quite the opposite. Can you give me an example?
  - gnufx 5y ago
    Indeed. He's said that Sutherland invented OOP (along with the other things Sutherland "didn't know was difficult"). Like most people, I guess, I found out about Sketchpad from Kay.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Kay has promoted many different definitions of "object-oriented", over the years, and many disjoint variations on Smalltalk's early history. It is probably best to stick to the very oldest interviews if you care to learn the real history.
    - locallost 5y ago
      I don't come here to bicker, but I would like to see an example of a "territorial claim" you mentioned. For now it seems that when questioned about specific examples to your claims, you revert to some more unrelated claims.
- kazinator 5y ago
  > were chosen with careful deliberation In actuality, it went probably closer to: "I'm gonna make a textual preprocessor for C that gives it Simula-like classes, for shits and giggles".
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    C++ was never at any stage a preprocessor. It was, instead, the first of what became many, many compilers that generated C from its AST as the target assembly language, relying then on the C compiler's optimizer and machine-code generator. Nowadays, LLVM IR fills exactly the role C once did, for new languages like Rust and Zig. Zig is just now in the middle of transitioning to its own optimizer and machine-code generator. Preprocessors were also common at the time, e.g. m4, Ratfor, and Cpp ("C preprocessor", which initially was a separate program), so it is not surprising that Cfront was mistaken for one, back then. That is not a reason to repeat the falsehood. You don't get a runaway success for four decades by accident.

ncmncm 5y ago

On some people, Alan Kay's territorial claims to others' ideas leave a bad impression. Nobody begrudges him (with Dan Ingalls) Smalltalk, which represents a serious material improvement over Lisp syntax. But it looks like sour grapes to complain about C++, a language designed by a grad student of Kristen Nygaard that found success in industrial applications. Practical reasons for that success—independent programs that run at native-machine speed, using native-machine data representations, and intimately compatible with an existing, successful industrial language—were chosen with careful deliberation, leaving certain Lisp strengths—particularly, function literals—aside, for later. It seemed like the right approach, at the time, and turned out to be. Java could have been the practical Smalltalk, but its designers elected instead to ape superficial details of C++, for no defensible reasons, to Java's detriment. The good ideas in Smalltalk have not had much effect on the world. All of Smalltalk's weaknesses were inherited directly from Lisp, leaving it with no better prospects than Lisp has had, or has, for identically the same reasons. But it turns out the "object orientation", like any other exclusive organizational principle, is an inadequate basis for a language meant for broad use. So, C++ supports OO and other styles, and even Java has begun to branch out. Subsequent development of C++ has drawn mainly upon ML, fleshing out support for other organizational styles that Smalltalk and Lisp never attempted. And, it got lambdas, after all.

locallost 5y ago
I've seen a couple of his talks and read some of his comments here and elsewhere. I've never seen any territorial claims, quite the opposite. Can you give me an example?
- gnufx 5y ago
  Indeed. He's said that Sutherland invented OOP (along with the other things Sutherland "didn't know was difficult"). Like most people, I guess, I found out about Sketchpad from Kay.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Kay has promoted many different definitions of "object-oriented", over the years, and many disjoint variations on Smalltalk's early history. It is probably best to stick to the very oldest interviews if you care to learn the real history.
  - locallost 5y ago
    I don't come here to bicker, but I would like to see an example of a "territorial claim" you mentioned. For now it seems that when questioned about specific examples to your claims, you revert to some more unrelated claims.
kazinator 5y ago
> were chosen with careful deliberation In actuality, it went probably closer to: "I'm gonna make a textual preprocessor for C that gives it Simula-like classes, for shits and giggles".
- ncmncm 5y ago
  C++ was never at any stage a preprocessor. It was, instead, the first of what became many, many compilers that generated C from its AST as the target assembly language, relying then on the C compiler's optimizer and machine-code generator. Nowadays, LLVM IR fills exactly the role C once did, for new languages like Rust and Zig. Zig is just now in the middle of transitioning to its own optimizer and machine-code generator. Preprocessors were also common at the time, e.g. m4, Ratfor, and Cpp ("C preprocessor", which initially was a separate program), so it is not surprising that Cfront was mistaken for one, back then. That is not a reason to repeat the falsehood. You don't get a runaway success for four decades by accident.