Really off topic now... was: Re: Face down, nine-edgefirst(wherein all is revealed)

demiourgos at smalltalk.org demiourgos at smalltalk.org
Thu May 11 22:33:30 UTC 2000


On Wed, 10 May 2000, Alan Kay wrote:

> 
> Josh --
> 
> At 7:50 PM -0800 5/9/00, Joshua Gargus wrote:


[snip]

> 
> I hope so too! But I said that about Smalltalk 20 years ago -- in the hopes
> that something much better would be invented by the next generation -- but
> here it still is! 

[snip]

Alan, Josh,

Doesn't it depend upon the niche and the product 'though?  Like typewriters,
"old style phones",  toilet tank mechanisms, and chopsticks have seen very
little diversification in design until recently, the latter two still essentially
the same as they were 100 or more years ago.  

Admittedly, typewriters took a long time to be accepted.  Harlan Mills was 
fond of writing and saying that while typewriters were invented in the 1840s, 
it wasn't until touch-typing was invented and widely practiced that they caught
on:  He noted that he once saw a letter from Stanton to Lincoln and was 
impressed that it was written longhand, in ink.

It's possible, I imagine, that the Smalltalk style is composable enough that
any conceivable system could be easily made of it, and that might be
its lasting quality.  I think FORTH had a similar quality, which is why it
got so much use among people who had both to calculate and control
various pointing and experimental mechanisms.

 --jtg



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