[squeak-dev] (Slightly OT) Dan Ingalls on FLOSS "Weekly"

Dan Ingalls graciously granted me a 90-minute interview for my FLOSS "Weekly"
show.  We talked about the early days at Xerox PARC, the birth of Squeak,
and the Lively Kernel.  Hear the interview at http://twit.tv/floss29.

Thanks Dan!

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

I just went through that interview and it is really something. A must
listen for every Squeaker to refresh the history of Squeak, the
Smalltalk but also the history of modern computing, because that's all
started within groups Dan Ingalls worked with and contributed the
hardest part. Again, a must listen!

Janko


Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> Dan Ingalls graciously granted me a 90-minute interview for my FLOSS "Weekly"
> show.  We talked about the early days at Xerox PARC, the birth of Squeak,
> and the Lively Kernel.  Hear the interview at http://twit.tv/floss29.
>
> Thanks Dan!
>

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Definitely. Most of the stories people will know (didn't know about
the "Ha Ha" part, though), but it's great to hear and learn new
things. Especially about E, caja and Lively Kernel.
BTW, I'm doing an embedded system right now and might be running
gumstix for prototyping. Didn't Jon Hylands use a gumstix with his
MicroSeeker? I see from his site that he's using an axis now.  I then
revisited Dan's weather station site (the swiki has an incorrect link
which I fixed so go read about it at:
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3502)

--
Brad Fuller
www.bradfuller.com

A must listen, if you want not only to learn (or to recall, for some
of us), but also there is a lot of fun brought by Randal tm :)

Let the 'serious' programmers write their multimillionaire lines of
half-working code in C, and let people like Dan, write a systems like
Lively Kernel just for fun of it!
We need to understand, that Programming HAS TO BE FUN, it should not
be a slave labor. Because history shows us that slave labor is most
ineffective way in doing anything and that's one of the reasons why
great empires fall. People just like to have fun!

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

On Fri, 23 May 2008 11:55:03 -0700, "Brad Fuller"
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> BTW, I'm doing an embedded system right now and might be running
> gumstix for prototyping. Didn't Jon Hylands use a gumstix with his
> MicroSeeker? I see from his site that he's using an axis now.

I use a gumstix with a few of my robots, although as yet MicroSeeker hasn't
run with a gumstix inside.

http://www.huv.com/roboMagellan - started out life with my Axim, but that
got fried, so I switched to using a gumstix (running Squeak).

http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=BrainEngineering+BrainBot
Uses a gumstix onboard, running Squeak, to handle redirection to the
Bioloid bus from a wifi socket.

MicroRaptor (http://www.huv.com/blog) uses a Hammer, which is another
ARM9-based SBC running Squeak.

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      [hidden email]      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Raptor (Small Biped Velociraptor Robot)
           http://www.huv.com/blog

      Fun interview!

      At one point, Leo laments an absence of literary coverage of
PARC's 1979 demo for Apple and its ramifications. It's out there. One
interesting source is "Fire in the Valley, the Making of the Personal
Computer"[1] by Paul Freiberger (another ex-Intervalite) and Michael
Swaine, which was also the basis for the hilarious film "Pirates of
Silicon Valley"[2]. There's even a scene featuring that demo, complete
with an indignant rendering of Adele. :)  And there's also the
documentary "Triumph of the Nerds"[3], featuring appearances from many
of the actual people.

      Another source is the classic (infamous?) "Fumbling the Future:
How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer"[4], by
Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander, which Leo even attempts to
mention (he can't quite remember the title).

      And there's always folklore.org, which recounts many interesting
Apple anecdotes from back in the day.


      thanks again!

-C

[1] http://www.fireinthevalley.com
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122
[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115398
[4] http://tinyurl.com/64fv2u (amazon.com)

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Craig Latta <[hidden email]> wrote:
Another title is "Dealers of Lightning:  XEROX PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" by Michael Hiltzik.  It's even published as a very entertaining audio book, which is the whole reason I even found out about Smalltalk and hence discovered Squeak about 4 years ago!

Rob

  I enjoyed it, too.  However, I like to nitpick, too^^;

  Leo seems to be caught in the typical trap of thinking that the
mouse was from Xerox PARC (Dan corrected it along the line, but it
still came up at the end), and PARC didn't make Xerox any money.  (The
invention of laser printer alone paid for investment in PARC.  It is
true that they could have made *huge* money, but it is wrong to say
that they didn't make profit.)

  And this is my own preference and people has different taste, the
host changes the subject too often. Dan formulates long sentences and
talks calmly, but the host interrupts often and a few things got
ununswered.  I know some people like that style, though.  (When it
comes to Disney and embedded project, I wished the Parks PDA project
was mentioned.  If he waited a few more seconds, Dan might have
thought of it^^;)

-- Yoshiki

I enjoyed it too.

I also felt that Dan was interrupted and the subject was changed too
often. What I would have liked Dan to talk about is his coming back to
the Squeak community as a member of the Board, his plans and
expectations. I'd also liked to hear his thoughts about the FONC
project. I mean, a little more focus on the future!

BTW, in the interview it was said that the Lisa was a Smalltalk machine.
I looked a bit in the web and could find nothing about this. Perhaps
this was a mistake, and the Lisa OS and dev tools were Pascal based?

Another note on the Lisa. The chief designer was Larry tesler, right?
The "don't mode me in" guy. However, the Lisa had eight modes. The 7/7
applications and the dev environment... If it had been a Smalltalk
machine, it could have been modeless.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:

2008/5/25 Juan Vuletich <[hidden email]>: What you mean by modes? Video modes or what?

> Cheers,
> Juan Vuletich
>
--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

Igor Stasenko wrote:
>
> What you mean by modes? Video modes or what?
>
>  

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(computer_interface) . If you have
it handy, check the Byte special issue on Smalltalk (August, 1981). A
must read!

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

>>>>> "Yoshiki" == Yoshiki Ohshima <[hidden email]> writes:

Yoshiki>   And this is my own preference and people has different taste, the
Yoshiki> host changes the subject too often. Dan formulates long sentences and
Yoshiki> talks calmly, but the host interrupts often and a few things got
Yoshiki> ununswered.  I know some people like that style, though.  (When it
Yoshiki> comes to Disney and embedded project, I wished the Parks PDA project
Yoshiki> was mentioned.  If he waited a few more seconds, Dan might have
Yoshiki> thought of it^^;)

We tape the show over skype, and Leo and I can't pass notes very well, because
it's hard for me to type to Leo, listen to the guest(s), and still keep my own
train of thought going.  Leo wanted to make sure to cover each of Dan's bio
points, and so he kept driving the conversation forward... there was a *lot*
to cover (even given the 90 minute format).  On the other hand, I was much
more interested in the Apple crossover, and the creation of Squeak, and the
Lively Kernel, so I kept trying to bring it back to those points.

Sometimes, Leo as the "everyman" and me as the "geek" works very well.  This
time, I'm sorry to say, it was a bit distracting as we had somewhat opposite
goals.

Overall, I'm very happy with this interview though.  And based on the feedback
I'm getting, most of you were happy as well.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

2008/5/25 Juan Vuletich <[hidden email]>: Oh, it was so long ago, that i forgot this issue was ever exist :)

> Cheers,
> Juan Vuletich
>
>



--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

> Sometimes, Leo as the "everyman" and me as the "geek" works very well.  This
> time, I'm sorry to say, it was a bit distracting as we had somewhat opposite
> goals.

  I have too much insider knowledge and doesn't have typical audience
mindset.  So, don't worry about my feedback.

> Overall, I'm very happy with this interview though.  And based on the feedback
> I'm getting, most of you were happy as well.

  As I wrote, I enjoyed the interview, and I think that having Dan's
thought and experience recorded in various ways is important.

  Thank you for taking time to reply to me.  It never happened before
so that is nice^^;

-- Yoshiki

On Sun, 25 May 2008 09:44:00 -0300, Juan Vuletich <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> BTW, in the interview it was said that the Lisa was a Smalltalk machine.
> I looked a bit in the web and could find nothing about this. Perhaps
> this was a mistake, and the Lisa OS and dev tools were Pascal based?

I don't think the Lisa was a "Smalltalk machine" in the pure sense. It
could run Apple Smalltalk, and is in fact the machine I got my first
exposure to Smalltalk on, back in 1987. As I remember, it was basically a
Mac, with a business focus.

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      [hidden email]      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Raptor (Small Biped Velociraptor Robot)
           http://www.huv.com/blog

Juan Vuletich wrote:
> BTW, in the interview it was said that the Lisa was a Smalltalk machine.
> I looked a bit in the web and could find nothing about this. Perhaps
> this was a mistake, and the Lisa OS and dev tools were Pascal based?

See the "Smalltalk machines" on page 5 of the "orange book". On the top
left you will see the Lisa.

> http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv.pdf

Xerox licensed Smalltalk to Apple, Tektronix, DEC and HP (the one that
they couldn't remember in the interview) under very generous terms in
exchange for them helping make it ready for general release by having
local teams do a port and debug the "blue book" as a result.

A special object-oriented Pascal was developed for the Lisa. Much of
that software was rewritten in 68000 assembly language for the Mac.

> Another note on the Lisa. The chief designer was Larry tesler, right?
> The "don't mode me in" guy. However, the Lisa had eight modes. The 7/7
> applications and the dev environment... If it had been a Smalltalk
> machine, it could have been modeless.

There were applications that ran side by side on the same screen and
even the notion of applications was partly hidden behind prototype
documents. So it was a bit more modeless than the Mac.

History is a complicated thing. Jef Raskin liked to say that he pushed
Steve Jobs to make that visit so he would get a clue and quit trying to
kill Jef's graphical Mac project when the Lisa was a text-only
minicomputer. Bill Atkinson said "I think mostly what...what we got in
that hour and a half was inspiration and just sort of basically a
bolstering of our convictions that a more graphical way to do things
would make this business computer more accessible."
(http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html)

The Xerox Star came out about the same time as the IBM PC (way before
the Lisa and the Mac) and was described in detail in at least one Byte
magazine article. So I was very familiar with it back in 1982 and was
using these ideas in my own designs, but it seems that nobody at Apple
knew anything at all about it. If the people who were there can't agree
on what happened, we certainly will never know for sure.

-- Jecel

Thanks Jecel!

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

>>>>> "Jecel" == Jecel Assumpcao <[hidden email]> writes:

Jecel> Xerox licensed Smalltalk to Apple, Tektronix, DEC and HP (the one that
Jecel> they couldn't remember in the interview) under very generous terms in
Jecel> exchange for them helping make it ready for general release by having
Jecel> local teams do a port and debug the "blue book" as a result.

And I think I spoke up about the Tek license, since that's how I was
able to run ST80 on the "magnolia" in that era.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion