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Yes, and this really showed with applications like Hypercard where you could build apps making use of the operating system's widget toolkit. The old Mac OS was

Yes, and this really showed with applications like Hypercard where you could build apps making use of the operating system's widget toolkit. The old Mac OS was based on the Xerox Star, which was in turn a commercial implementation of Douglas Engelbart's original GUI computer NLS. The Xerox Star supported both Lisp and Smalltalk development environments. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs didn't care about Lisp or Smalltalk, and he hated Hypercard, and he took the company's product lines in a consumerist direction, which is why Apple has "app stores" nowadays instead of a thriving ecosystem of tiny Lisp programs that compose well with each other.

pasc1878 4y ago
If Jobs did not care a ot Smalltalk the why was Next based on Objective C which is basically Smalltalk grafted onto C. I suspect the reason that the Lisa was not Lisp or Smalltalk based is due to speed and cost of memory.
- ramin_hal9001 4y ago
  > If Jobs did not care a ot Smalltalk the why was Next based on Objective C which is basically Smalltalk grafted onto C. That is a good question, I don't really know (or maybe I am misinformed). Somewhere along the way, Richard Stallman started GNUstep, and Sun Microsystems and NeXTstep founded the OpenStep standard. But it is strange to me that when Jobs started NeXTstep his engineers choose Objective-C instead of trying to license or port Smalltalk, I was under the impression that Jobs didn't care for it for some inscrutable reason. I do know after Jobs left, Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL) continued to see some development, and there was even a version of the Hypercard product that could be programmed in Lisp (I can't remember what it was called). But when Jobs came back he obliterated all of that in favor of all the stuff they acquired from NeXTstep. MCL eventually became Clozure Common Lisp which is still in development. I think BeOS (now Haiku) does a better job making everything object oriented in the way that Smalltalk does. I have also heard (though I've never tried it myself) that OS/2 also does a much better job making a fully object oriented system.
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > I was under the impression that Jobs didn't care for it for some inscrutable reason. i dont remember where i read it, but i distinctly remember somewhere that he said something like "don't use any object oriented stuff, its too slow" to which his subordinates went and did it anyways... kinda like the floppy disk in the mac, devs did the right thing in the end even if he originally didn't want it if thats wrong i'd love to be corrected though!
    - pasc1878 4y ago
      It is impossible to prove that someone did not say a particular thing so I don't think anyone can correct you. The only thing that can happen is if someone can find the quote and confirm your memory.
Synaesthesia 4y ago
I think what we ought to blame rather than Jobs is the logic of capitalism, maximum profits all the time, even at the cost of other things.
- hindenburg 4y ago
  Please, elucidate. I'd love to hear about all the superior programming environments developed in non-capitalist economies.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    To be fair, FOSS is pretty much the definition of socialism. Donations are pretty much the only way money is made directly off the software itself. Running an instance of the software, if it's a server for example, is a slightly different story. Everyone contributes of their own volition and interest. I'm not a fan of government-enforced socialism or communism. But if you can get enough people together to willingly participate independently, I'm chill with it. And FOSS software is an example of it working out alright.
    - shakow 4y ago
      > the definition of socialism. Donations are pretty much the only way money is made That's not the definition of socialism at all. If you think about it, it's actually much closer to the principle of right-wing Christian charity rather than the left-wing sharing of means of production.
      - andyjda 4y ago
        Christian charity is not a right-wing principle. Many in the US tend to associate Christianity with right-wing ideology, but there's actually quite a few examples of a varied history of left-wing Christian thought and action. Sticking to US history: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Dorothy Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Day). Outside of the US, Liberation Theology in Latin America was an ideology/movement explicitly linking Christian (mostly Catholic) teachings with Marxist-inspired struggles for workers' rights (sometimes those links are easy to do, if you focus on quotes such as "blessed are the poor"). I do agree that FOS software is not socialism, and that donations aren't socialism. But it's important to note that many people who work on FOS software do so without expecting anything in return. I think that idea is in sharp contrast with typical right-wing and centrist economic theories that view human beings as mostly money-driven, self-centered individuals.
lispm 4y ago
> The Xerox Star supported both Lisp and Smalltalk development environments. There was a common hardware. It ran Star, Lisp or Smalltalk - but not at the same time. Each were whole operating systems.

pasc1878 4y ago

If Jobs did not care a ot Smalltalk the why was Next based on Objective C which is basically Smalltalk grafted onto C. I suspect the reason that the Lisa was not Lisp or Smalltalk based is due to speed and cost of memory.

ramin_hal9001 4y ago
> If Jobs did not care a ot Smalltalk the why was Next based on Objective C which is basically Smalltalk grafted onto C. That is a good question, I don't really know (or maybe I am misinformed). Somewhere along the way, Richard Stallman started GNUstep, and Sun Microsystems and NeXTstep founded the OpenStep standard. But it is strange to me that when Jobs started NeXTstep his engineers choose Objective-C instead of trying to license or port Smalltalk, I was under the impression that Jobs didn't care for it for some inscrutable reason. I do know after Jobs left, Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL) continued to see some development, and there was even a version of the Hypercard product that could be programmed in Lisp (I can't remember what it was called). But when Jobs came back he obliterated all of that in favor of all the stuff they acquired from NeXTstep. MCL eventually became Clozure Common Lisp which is still in development. I think BeOS (now Haiku) does a better job making everything object oriented in the way that Smalltalk does. I have also heard (though I've never tried it myself) that OS/2 also does a much better job making a fully object oriented system.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > I was under the impression that Jobs didn't care for it for some inscrutable reason. i dont remember where i read it, but i distinctly remember somewhere that he said something like "don't use any object oriented stuff, its too slow" to which his subordinates went and did it anyways... kinda like the floppy disk in the mac, devs did the right thing in the end even if he originally didn't want it if thats wrong i'd love to be corrected though!
  - pasc1878 4y ago
    It is impossible to prove that someone did not say a particular thing so I don't think anyone can correct you. The only thing that can happen is if someone can find the quote and confirm your memory.

Synaesthesia 4y ago

I think what we ought to blame rather than Jobs is the logic of capitalism, maximum profits all the time, even at the cost of other things.

hindenburg 4y ago
Please, elucidate. I'd love to hear about all the superior programming environments developed in non-capitalist economies.
- seanw444 4y ago
  To be fair, FOSS is pretty much the definition of socialism. Donations are pretty much the only way money is made directly off the software itself. Running an instance of the software, if it's a server for example, is a slightly different story. Everyone contributes of their own volition and interest. I'm not a fan of government-enforced socialism or communism. But if you can get enough people together to willingly participate independently, I'm chill with it. And FOSS software is an example of it working out alright.
  - shakow 4y ago
    > the definition of socialism. Donations are pretty much the only way money is made That's not the definition of socialism at all. If you think about it, it's actually much closer to the principle of right-wing Christian charity rather than the left-wing sharing of means of production.
    - andyjda 4y ago
      Christian charity is not a right-wing principle. Many in the US tend to associate Christianity with right-wing ideology, but there's actually quite a few examples of a varied history of left-wing Christian thought and action. Sticking to US history: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Dorothy Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Day). Outside of the US, Liberation Theology in Latin America was an ideology/movement explicitly linking Christian (mostly Catholic) teachings with Marxist-inspired struggles for workers' rights (sometimes those links are easy to do, if you focus on quotes such as "blessed are the poor"). I do agree that FOS software is not socialism, and that donations aren't socialism. But it's important to note that many people who work on FOS software do so without expecting anything in return. I think that idea is in sharp contrast with typical right-wing and centrist economic theories that view human beings as mostly money-driven, self-centered individuals.

lispm 4y ago

> The Xerox Star supported both Lisp and Smalltalk development environments. There was a common hardware. It ran Star, Lisp or Smalltalk - but not at the same time. Each were whole operating systems.