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> The aforementioned languages not only boil down Smalltalk's object system into a basic "code sharing" scheme This is wrong. C++ wasn't based on Smalltalk. It

by dkarl 4y ago

> The aforementioned languages not only boil down Smalltalk's object system into a basic "code sharing" scheme This is wrong. C++ wasn't based on Smalltalk. It was inspired by ideas in Simula, which predated Smalltalk. Alan Kay tried to convince people (and succeeded with many) that he owned the term object-oriented, because he was the first person to use it. He wanted it mean only his ideas, but from very early on people were applying it to a variety of ideas that were developing concurrently in the sixties and seventies, his being only one flavor among others. He never gave up trying to convince people that all the other competing ideas were a distorted, mistaken version of his own, but the truth is that those other ideas had their own history and earned their success on their own merits.

discreteevent 4y ago
I think Smalltalk was inspired by Simula and Kay has given it credit. For me the big insight of Simula was making the object first class. Once you make something like that first class you get a lot of benefits and the distinction between the styles of doing that (e.g. Lisp Vs Smalltalk or Simula) are important but not near as important as that first insight. > In Simula I, Dahl made two changes to the Algol 60 block: small changes, but changes with far-reaching consequences. First, “a block instance is permitted to outlive its calling statement, and to remain in existence for as long as the program needs to refer to it” [11]. Second, references to those block instances are treated as data, which gives the program a way to refer to them as independent objects. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890540113000795 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089054011...
infinite8s 4y ago
> Alan Kay tried to convince people (and succeeded with many) that he owned the term object-oriented, because he was the first person to use it. He wanted it mean only his ideas, but from very early on people were applying it to a variety of ideas that were developing concurrently in the sixties and seventies, his being only one flavor among others. Do you have any citations for this? From the quotes I've seen, it sounds like he regrets using the term 'object-oriented' for the approaches he was thinking of: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev//2002-April/038745.html http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev//2002...
- dkarl 4y ago
  I think you get a good idea of his attitude in the first sentence: > terms are also "colonized" for political and fad reasons His version of the story always casts aspersions on alternative OO ideas and frequently, as here, implies devious and mercenary motives to people who were simply working along different lines. Don't get me wrong, Alan Kay was brilliant, but like many visionaries he had utopian expectations for how his ideas would impact the world. When the future didn't materialize the way he envisioned it, he committed to this narrative that his ideas had been robbed of their success by imposter ideas that stole away attention and energy. It's a shame because there's a much more positive story to be told about the proliferation of different OO ideas that mutually influenced each other and succeeded in different ways.

by dkarl 4y ago

discreteevent 4y ago

I think Smalltalk was inspired by Simula and Kay has given it credit. For me the big insight of Simula was making the object first class. Once you make something like that first class you get a lot of benefits and the distinction between the styles of doing that (e.g. Lisp Vs Smalltalk or Simula) are important but not near as important as that first insight. > In Simula I, Dahl made two changes to the Algol 60 block: small changes, but changes with far-reaching consequences. First, “a block instance is permitted to outlive its calling statement, and to remain in existence for as long as the program needs to refer to it” [11]. Second, references to those block instances are treated as data, which gives the program a way to refer to them as independent objects. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890540113000795 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089054011...

infinite8s 4y ago

> Alan Kay tried to convince people (and succeeded with many) that he owned the term object-oriented, because he was the first person to use it. He wanted it mean only his ideas, but from very early on people were applying it to a variety of ideas that were developing concurrently in the sixties and seventies, his being only one flavor among others. Do you have any citations for this? From the quotes I've seen, it sounds like he regrets using the term 'object-oriented' for the approaches he was thinking of: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev//2002-April/038745.html http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev//2002...

dkarl 4y ago
I think you get a good idea of his attitude in the first sentence: > terms are also "colonized" for political and fad reasons His version of the story always casts aspersions on alternative OO ideas and frequently, as here, implies devious and mercenary motives to people who were simply working along different lines. Don't get me wrong, Alan Kay was brilliant, but like many visionaries he had utopian expectations for how his ideas would impact the world. When the future didn't materialize the way he envisioned it, he committed to this narrative that his ideas had been robbed of their success by imposter ideas that stole away attention and energy. It's a shame because there's a much more positive story to be told about the proliferation of different OO ideas that mutually influenced each other and succeeded in different ways.