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 somethin

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...