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> Listing Self rather than Smalltalk as the basis of OO languages is also a bit odd. That was my first reaction too. I also agree that Simula deserves a mentio

> Listing Self rather than Smalltalk as the basis of OO languages is also a bit odd. That was my first reaction too. I also agree that Simula deserves a mention here. AFAICT more languages derived from that model than from Smalltalk or Self directly, and I'm pretty sure the authors of later languages such as C++ have acknowledged as much.

vidarh 3y ago
Yeah, most Stroustrup and Gosling has acknowledged that, at least. The reason I'd be ok with Smalltalk there is that Smalltalk at least was a significant break and you could argue that many of the "non-Smalltalk-y" OO languages are really ALGOL-derived languages that took some OO aspects (especially if you move Ruby out of the ALGOL bucket) in that most of them tend to combine support for both non-object types and objects, and have lots of constructs that operate on non-object values. As such I can see the merits in both/either of Smalltalk and Simula treated as the "ur-language" for OO in a way I can't for Self. Self is remarkable, but as I've mentioned before, more for the advances its implementation brought.
Mesopropithecus 3y ago
The author's notion of OO is intentionally narrow. I don't know about Simula, but C++ is still reasonably close to Algol, compared to what Smalltalk and Self bring to the table (the author also mentions programming environments vs. text files). If you accept that narrow definition at least for the scope of the article, it makes sense.
- vidarh 3y ago
  It's exceptionally narrow, in that it rules out the vast majority of languages that even purists would agree are OO. E.g. in Ruby you can not take the value of anything and get anything but an object (e.g. integers are objects, true is an object, nil is an object), but Ruby is not an OO language by the article's definition because it fails the part about conditionals. Even though you can do this in Ruby (probably buggy, just threw it together) - it's just not idiomatic and the language has syntactic sugar for "less OO" forms: def true.ifTrue; yield; true; end def true.ifFalse; true; end def false.ifFalse; yield; true; end def false.ifTrue; false; end (1 < 5).ifTrue { puts "TRUE!" }.ifFalse { puts "FALSE!" } # Or: (1 > 5).ifTrue { puts "TRUE!" }.ifFalse { puts "FALSE!" } So it might make sense if you accept that narrow definition, but I don't think many people will find that narrow definition to make sense. I certainly don't.
- int_19h 3y ago
  Simula itself was almost a superset of Algol-60. It's pretty much Algol-60 cleaned up a little bit and with a Java-like object model bolted on top. C++ is a direct descendant of that, sometimes even syntactically - e.g. the keywords "class", "new", and "virtual" all come from Simula where they had largely the same meaning. It's close enough to our mainstream OO languages today that Simula code can be easily understood, at least so long as it doesn't use the async features: https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Abstract_type#Simula https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Abstract_type#Simula

vidarh 3y ago

Yeah, most Stroustrup and Gosling has acknowledged that, at least. The reason I'd be ok with Smalltalk there is that Smalltalk at least was a significant break and you could argue that many of the "non-Smalltalk-y" OO languages are really ALGOL-derived languages that took some OO aspects (especially if you move Ruby out of the ALGOL bucket) in that most of them tend to combine support for both non-object types and objects, and have lots of constructs that operate on non-object values. As such I can see the merits in both/either of Smalltalk and Simula treated as the "ur-language" for OO in a way I can't for Self. Self is remarkable, but as I've mentioned before, more for the advances its implementation brought.

Mesopropithecus 3y ago

The author's notion of OO is intentionally narrow. I don't know about Simula, but C++ is still reasonably close to Algol, compared to what Smalltalk and Self bring to the table (the author also mentions programming environments vs. text files). If you accept that narrow definition at least for the scope of the article, it makes sense.

vidarh 3y ago
It's exceptionally narrow, in that it rules out the vast majority of languages that even purists would agree are OO. E.g. in Ruby you can not take the value of anything and get anything but an object (e.g. integers are objects, true is an object, nil is an object), but Ruby is not an OO language by the article's definition because it fails the part about conditionals. Even though you can do this in Ruby (probably buggy, just threw it together) - it's just not idiomatic and the language has syntactic sugar for "less OO" forms: def true.ifTrue; yield; true; end def true.ifFalse; true; end def false.ifFalse; yield; true; end def false.ifTrue; false; end (1 < 5).ifTrue { puts "TRUE!" }.ifFalse { puts "FALSE!" } # Or: (1 > 5).ifTrue { puts "TRUE!" }.ifFalse { puts "FALSE!" } So it might make sense if you accept that narrow definition, but I don't think many people will find that narrow definition to make sense. I certainly don't.
int_19h 3y ago
Simula itself was almost a superset of Algol-60. It's pretty much Algol-60 cleaned up a little bit and with a Java-like object model bolted on top. C++ is a direct descendant of that, sometimes even syntactically - e.g. the keywords "class", "new", and "virtual" all come from Simula where they had largely the same meaning. It's close enough to our mainstream OO languages today that Simula code can be easily understood, at least so long as it doesn't use the async features: https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Abstract_type#Simula https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Abstract_type#Simula