Hi Alan,

    I have cancelled many replies to this post.

    There are so many questions I like to ask
    and I am not sure if they are appropriate.

    I have a feeling that when Smalltalk was
    invented it was meant to be a computer
    language and environment for children to
    play with to invent the future.

    From "The Early History of Smalltalk" (13 years ago) :

<QUOTE>
V. 1976-80--The first modern Smalltalk (-76), its birth, applications, and
improvements

By the end of 1975 I felt that we were losing our balance--that the
"Dynabook for children" idea was slowily dimming out--or perhaps starting to
be overwhelmed by professional needs. In January 1976, I took the whole
group to Pajaro Dunes for a three day offsite to bring up the issues and try
to reset the compass. It was called "Let's Burn Our Disk Packs." There were
no shouting matches, the group liked (I would go so far to say: loved) each
other too much for that. But we were troubled. I used the old aphorism that
"no biological organism can live in its own waste products" to please for a
really fresh start: a hw-sw system very different from the ALTO and
Smalltalk, One thing we all did agree on was that the current Smalltalk's
power did not match our various levels of aspiration. I thought we needed
something different, as I did not see how OOP by itself was going to solve
our end-user problems. Others, particularly some of the grad students,
really wanted a better Smalltalk that was faster and could be used for
bigger problems. I think Dan felt that a better Smalltalk could be the
vehicle for the different system I wanted, but could not describe clearly.
The meeting was not a disaster, and we went back to PARC still friends and
colleagues, but the absolute cohesiveness of the first four years never
rejelled. I started designing a new small machine and language I called the
NoteTaker and dan started to design Smalltalk-76.

</QUOTE>

    "Let's Burn Our Disk Packs."

    How many times did you want to do this
    and did you ever do it?

    Considering that Squeak is "a living thing",
    I really love this following quote:

    "NO BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM CAN LIVE
      IN ITS OWN WASTE PRODUCTS"
    TO PLEAD FOR A REALLY FRESH START

    (capitalization is mine and "please" was changed to PLEAD)

<QUOTE>
VI. 1980-83--The release version of Smalltalk (-80)

As Dan said "the decision not to continue the NoteTaker project added
motivation to release Smalltalk widely." But not for me. By this time I was
both happy about the cleanliness and elegance of the Smalltalk conception as
realized by Dan and theothers, and sad that it was farther away than ever
from Children--it came to me as a shock that no child had programmed in any
Smalltalk since Smalltalk-76 made its debut. Xerox (and PARC) were now into
"workstations" as things in themselves--but I still wanted "playstations".
</QUOTE>

    I sincerely wish that children will be able to comprehend
    Squeak and program in it.

    I am wondering how many people on this list can assert that
    they fully comprehend the "kitchen sink" Squeak.

    It would be a big shock to me if no one can assert that.

>
> The big problem is that most programmers have a very hard time thinking
> about facilitating programming for people who are not like them,

    Are these "people" the children that Smalltalk was intended for?

    What about:

<QUOTE>
...

A twentieth century problem is that technology has become too "easy". When
it was hard to do anything whether good or bad, enough time was taken so
that the result was usually good. Now we can make things almost trivially,
especially in software, but most of the designs are trivial as well. This is
inverse vandalism: the making of things because you can. Couple this to even
less sophisticated buyers and you have generated an exploitation marketplace
similar to that set up for teenagers. A counter to this is to generate
enormous disatisfaction with one's designs using the entire history of human
art as a standard and goal. Then the trick is to decouple the disatisfaction
from self worth--otherwise it is either too depressing or one stops too soon
with trivial results.

</QUOTE>

    and now it's 21st century.

    (Just wondering how often did SqC have to race a deadline ;-)

> and they also have a very hard time understanding media.
>

    Would you please elaborate on this.

    Cheers,

    PhiHo


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Kay" <alan.kay at squeakland.org>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>; "The general-purpose Squeak
developers list" <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: YASoB (was Re: some news)


> At 10:03 AM 5/18/2006, SmallSqueak wrote:
> --snip--
>
>
> >     I have a feeling that to many Smalltakers, in general, there have
been
> >     no advances in software engineering and computer language design
> >     since Smalltalk was invented.
> >
> >     When was Smalltalk really invented?
>
> The idea of objects as message sending computers came to me in Nov 66. I
> did several OOP languages between then and 1970.
>
>
> >     Was it in 1972 or 1976 or 1980?
>
> My original plan for Smalltalk was to make a Logo-like language that
> combined objects with Carl Hewitt's PLANNER (a pattern directed language
> that anticipated most abilities of Prolog by many years) and Ned Irons IMP
> (another pattern directed language but aimed at extension by end-users).
> This design is now called Smalltalk-71.
>
> I was working on this when the hallway "bet" with Dan Ingalls and Ted
> Kaehler happened in Sept 1972. I worked for several weeks to write a less
> than one page McCarthy-like eval for an OOP language that could parse its
> own messages. Dan implemented this in Oct 1972, and all of a sudden we had
> a working system, which was put right on the Alto when it started working
a
> few months later.
>
>
> >     Did Squeak Central insist on creating things that are worse than
> >     Smalltalk-72 and the crowd assumed that it is automatically better
> >     than something "old" like Smalltalk-72?
>
> Not really. Smalltalk-76 in many ways was the best compromise between the
> need for speed and a number of the good features of Smalltalk-72. The
> process after Smalltalk-72 was very conditioned by adult programmers
making
> a system for more for themselves than having children be able to use it as
> a top priority.
>
>
> >     For that matter, did the commercial Smalltalk vendors insist
> >     likewise?
>
> The big problem is that most programmers have a very hard time thinking
> about facilitating programming for people who are not like them, and they
> also have a very hard time understanding media.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
>
> >     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
> > >
>
>
>