Jecel,

    Sorry couldn't get back to you sooner.

    Quota for SmallSqueak account (incoming+outgoing)
    got exceeded and he coudn't send any mail to the list ;-)

>
> Rather than speaking for Alan, I will just quote two paragraphs from his
> "Early History of Smalltalk" (there is a link to a PDF version in Stef's
> Free Books page and there is a html version with some missing pictures
> at http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html):
>

    Many thanks for the link.

    Many thanks to whoever took the time to make this
    HTML version of the article available.

    I know there is a scanned version but I found it hard to read.


    I browsed through it and been wondering who is Semour Papert

        "A month later, I finally visited Semour Papert..."

    and who is Can:
        "Ted went back to CMU but Can was still around egging me on."

    Early Smalltalk is much more interesting than Squeak ;-) :

        "It evaluted 3 = 4
        very slowly (it was "glacial", as Butler liked to say)
        but the answer alwas came out 7."

    Who is Check:

        "Just before Check started work on the machine ..."
        ...
        "Check had started his "bet" on November 22, 1972."

    ...
    ...
    ...


    It is very much appreciated if some seasoned Smalltalkers
    would help to proof read this HTML version.

    I would like to suggest that The Squeak Foundation would
    ask for permission to put it on The Foundation home page.

    Many thanks in advance.

    Cheers,

    PhiHo


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jecel Assumpcao Jr" <jecel at merlintec.com>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 2:44 PM
Subject: YASoB (was Re: some news)


> PhiHo,
>
> > "Alan Kay" wrote:
> >
> > "... it really bothers me that so many people on this list
> > are satisfied with Smalltalk-80 (Yikes!)
> > But that's another soapbox."
> >
> >
> > Dear Seasoned Squeakers,
> >
> > I have followed this list for a while and I have a feeling
> > that Alan Kay is not particularly fond of Smalltalk-80.
> >
> > I've been wondering why or maybe I got it wrong.
> >
> > Your thought is very much appreciated.
> >
> > I really hope if Alan is not too busy we will be
> > able to hear it straight from the Dragon's mouth. ;-)
>
> Rather than speaking for Alan, I will just quote two paragraphs from his
> "Early History of Smalltalk" (there is a link to a PDF version in Stef's
> Free Books page and there is a html version with some missing pictures
> at http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html):
>
> -------
> I will try to show where most of the influences came from and how they
> were transformed in the magnetic field formed by the new personal
> computing metaphor. It was the attitudes as well as the great ideas of
> the pioneers that helped Smalltalk get invented. Many of the people I
> admired most at this time--such as Ivan Sutherland, Marvin Minsky,
> Seymour Papert, Gordon Moore, Bob Barton, Dave Evans, Butler Lampson,
> Jerome Bruner, and others--seemed to have a splendid sense that their
> creations, though wonderful by relative standards, were not near to the
> absolute thresholds that had to be crossed. Small minds try to form
> religions, the great ones just want better routes up the mountain. Where
> Newton said he saw further by standing on the shoulders of giants,
> computer scientists all too often stand on each other's toes. Myopia is
> still a problem where there are giants' shoulders to stand
> on--"outsight" is better than insight--but it can be minimized by using
> glasses whose lenses are highly sensitive to esthetics and criticism.
> -------
>
> and
>
> -------
> New ideas go through stages of acceptance, both from within and without.
> >From within, the sequence moves from "barely seeing" a pattern several
> times, then noting it but not perceiving its "cosmic" significance, then
> using it operationally in several areas, then comes a "grand rotation"
> in which the pattern becomes the center of a new way of thinking, and
> finally, it turns into the same kind of inflexible religion that it
> originally broke away from. From without, as Schopenhauer noted, the new
> idea is first denounced as the work of the insane, in a few years it is
> considered obvious and mundane, and finally the original denouncers will
> claim to have invented it.
> -------
>
> My comment on this is that Smalltalk-80 was indeed wonderful by relative
> standards, but it shouldn't become a religion that keeps us from
> inventing something better. Though this isn't nearly as sad as people
> who keep insisting on creating things that are worse while the public
> assumes it is automatically better than something "old" like Smalltalk
> (what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery").
>
> --Jecel
>