On 25.12.2014 01:22, Yoshiki Ohshima
wrote:
A holiday present from the past! I digitized a video tape that VPRI
has and uploaded:
http://youtu.be/4ki2AQvneD8
Hope you enjoy it!
Dear Dan,
Thank you for taking the trouble to record the history of Smalltalk
history; I think it is both interesting and important to understand
how the Smalltalk technology evolved.
I hear you refer to Smalltalk as a programming language. Most of
the programmers I know will misunderstand this. To them, a program
is a text written in a programming language. The text is the Real
Thing, the executable is derived.
Contrast with Alan's definition of object orientation: Objects are
like computers communicating through a very fast network. With
Smalltalk, communication became a first class citizen of computing.
The Real Thing is now a universe of communicating objects. Objects
are mustered on the fly to perform a task. There is no "Smalltalk
Language" in the common sense of the word. It is true that
Smalltalk releases have a default language for compiling methods
within a class. The compiler is private to the class; other classes
may use different compilers and, therefore, different languages. For
example, VisualWorks had a class where the methods were written in
SQL.
My main objection to calling Smalltalk a programing language is that
it belittles its importance. IMO, Alan's concept of object
orientation that is reified in Smalltalk is the the most important
software invention since the first programming languages in the
1950s. It heralds an entirely new way of thinking about computing by
replacing the underlying digital computer with a universe of
communicating entities. I call it an
object computer. (I see
signs of this idea cropping up in other contexts as for example in "
Unikernels: Rise
of the Virtual Library Operating System").
We are only scratching the surface of the object computer's
capabilities. I hope we in the coming years will deepen our
understanding of what this invention entails and create powerful
ways to exploit it. Squeak and its derivatives give us a flying
start.
I wish you all a productive and Happy New Year
--Trygve
Locked
