[squeak-dev] Are Objects really hard?

H. Hirzel hannes.hirzel at gmail.com
Wed Feb 15 13:01:00 UTC 2012


On 2/11/12, Janko Mivšek <janko.mivsek at eranova.si> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Again one interesting topic for this weekend to discuss. David Nolen, a
> Lisp and JavaScript guy posted in his blog an article titled Illiterate
> Programming [1] where he said:
>
> "...Yet I think Smalltalk still fundamentally failed (remember this is a
> programming language originally designed to scale from children to
> adults) because *Objects are really hard* and no-one really understands
> to this day how to do them right...."
>
> He links to Alan Kay post [2] back in 1998 where he talks about problems
> with inheritance:
>
> "Here are a few problems in the naive inheritance systems we use today:
> confusions of Taxonomy and Parentage, of Specialization and Refinement,
> of Parts and Wholes, of Semantics and Pragmatics..."
>
> Let we concentrate on broader "Objects are really hard and no-one really
> understands to this day how to do them right" claim and not merely
> inheritance, please.
>
> Best regards
> Janko
>
> [1] http://dosync.posterous.com/illiterate-programming
> [2]
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-April/009261.html
>
> --
> Janko Mivšek
> Aida/Web
> Smalltalk Web Application Server
> http://www.aidaweb.si
>
>


Interestingly on the cited page

http://dosync.posterous.com/illiterate-programming

we read

"There's nothing more powerful in aiding readability than a small core
set of concepts. In this sense I think Smalltalk continues to be one
of the few languages to get anywhere near LISP. "

--Hannes


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list