4 ms·

Right time, right problem, good management, enormous funds, Bay Area hippie culture, access to Stanford, uninterrupted time, and luck. At PARC they were able t

Right time, right problem, good management, enormous funds, Bay Area hippie culture, access to Stanford, uninterrupted time, and luck. At PARC they were able to peer 10 years into the future. That was a big deal for 1969-1979. Looking 10 years forward recently is less transformative. Not much changed between 2012 and 2022.

chasil 4y ago
It was interesting to hear that Smalltalk was originally a language for Children (similar to Logo), and was coded in BASIC. Alan Kay expressed some dismay after his departure that Smalltalk became so much more complex when a compiler was created.
- igouy 4y ago
  > … and was coded in BASIC. I don't know that there wasn't some initial implementation "coded in BASIC" — Smalltalk 71? otoh — "Smalltalk 72, which was done in BCPL on a Data General Nova." https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Adele_Goldberg#Developing_Smalltalk https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Adele_Goldberg#Developing_Smal...
  - scroot 4y ago
    > I don't know that there wasn't some initial implementation "coded in BASIC" — Smalltalk 71 Dan has said/written before that the "first pass" -- which was done in like a weekend or something -- was done in BASIC just to get a feel for the thing. It wasn't a full blown environment or anything.
    - igouy 4y ago
      And the canonical source — 'Much to my surprise, only a few days later, Dan Ingalls showed me the scheme working on the NOVA. He had coded it up (in BASIC!), added a lot of details, such as a token scanner, a list maker, and the like, and there it was -- running. As he like to say: "You just do it and it's done."' "The Early History of Smalltalk" ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 28, Issue 3, March 1993 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/234286.1057828 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/234286.1057828
mcswell 4y ago
Hippie culture? Can you expand on how that was an advantage?
- lioeters 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said
  - mcswell 4y ago
    thx!

chasil 4y ago

It was interesting to hear that Smalltalk was originally a language for Children (similar to Logo), and was coded in BASIC. Alan Kay expressed some dismay after his departure that Smalltalk became so much more complex when a compiler was created.

igouy 4y ago
> … and was coded in BASIC. I don't know that there wasn't some initial implementation "coded in BASIC" — Smalltalk 71? otoh — "Smalltalk 72, which was done in BCPL on a Data General Nova." https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Adele_Goldberg#Developing_Smalltalk https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Adele_Goldberg#Developing_Smal...
- scroot 4y ago
  > I don't know that there wasn't some initial implementation "coded in BASIC" — Smalltalk 71 Dan has said/written before that the "first pass" -- which was done in like a weekend or something -- was done in BASIC just to get a feel for the thing. It wasn't a full blown environment or anything.
  - igouy 4y ago
    And the canonical source — 'Much to my surprise, only a few days later, Dan Ingalls showed me the scheme working on the NOVA. He had coded it up (in BASIC!), added a lot of details, such as a token scanner, a list maker, and the like, and there it was -- running. As he like to say: "You just do it and it's done."' "The Early History of Smalltalk" ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 28, Issue 3, March 1993 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/234286.1057828 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/234286.1057828

mcswell 4y ago

Hippie culture? Can you expand on how that was an advantage?

lioeters 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said
- mcswell 4y ago
  thx!