3 ms·

> Kay: [OOP] is basically an abstraction of an unlimited number of complete computers networked together (and where — by definition — the interior of the comput

> Kay: [OOP] is basically an abstraction of an unlimited number of complete computers networked together (and where — by definition — the interior of the computers can also be a system of computers (both real and virtual). If you only worry about semantics, this provides a very powerful universal building block at all scales. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recollect Kay using this generalization before.

sjg007 5y ago
Smalltalk baby
brudgers 5y ago
Maybe because it felt obvious enough to go without saying...I mean ethernet was developed alongside Smalltalk and the Alto at PARC...since message passing is how networks work. As I digress, if you have to divide up a workload, you can start with a language based on message passing or you can implement message passing in some other language. The danger with implementing it is to not recognize that's what you're doing.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  I’m not aware that Smalltalk ever developed the network technology or namespaces to create a network of systems comparable to the web. Have you heard of anything like that?
mpweiher 5y ago
http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ In computer terms, Smalltalk is a recursion on the notion of computer itself. Instead of dividing "computer stuff" into things each less strong than the whole—like data structures, procedures, and functions which are the usual paraphernalia of programming languages—each Smalltalk object is a recursion on the entire possibilities of the computer. Thus its semantics are a bit like having thousands and thousands of computers all hooked together by a very fast network. Questions of concrete representation can thus be postponed almost indefinitely because we are mainly concerned that the computers behave appropriately, and are interested in particular strategies only if the results are off or come back too slowly. That's from the start of the HOPL paper, 1993. I would be surprised if he didn't use this image long before that.

sjg007 5y ago

Smalltalk baby

brudgers 5y ago

Maybe because it felt obvious enough to go without saying...I mean ethernet was developed alongside Smalltalk and the Alto at PARC...since message passing is how networks work. As I digress, if you have to divide up a workload, you can start with a language based on message passing or you can implement message passing in some other language. The danger with implementing it is to not recognize that's what you're doing.

wrycoder 5y ago
I’m not aware that Smalltalk ever developed the network technology or namespaces to create a network of systems comparable to the web. Have you heard of anything like that?

mpweiher 5y ago

http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ In computer terms, Smalltalk is a recursion on the notion of computer itself. Instead of dividing "computer stuff" into things each less strong than the whole—like data structures, procedures, and functions which are the usual paraphernalia of programming languages—each Smalltalk object is a recursion on the entire possibilities of the computer. Thus its semantics are a bit like having thousands and thousands of computers all hooked together by a very fast network. Questions of concrete representation can thus be postponed almost indefinitely because we are mainly concerned that the computers behave appropriately, and are interested in particular strategies only if the results are off or come back too slowly. That's from the start of the HOPL paper, 1993. I would be surprised if he didn't use this image long before that.