[squeak-dev] From Smalltalk to Squeak by Dan Ingalls at CHM 10/11/2001 (VPRI 797)

Trygve Reenskaug trygver at ifi.uio.no
Sun Dec 28 10:16:04 UTC 2014


On 25.12.2014 01:22, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
> A holiday present from the past!  I digitized a video tape that VPRI
> has and uploaded:
> http://youtu.be/4ki2AQvneD8
>
> Hope you enjoy it!
>

Dear Dan,
Thank you for taking the trouble to record the history of Smalltalk 
history; I think it is both interesting and important to understand how 
the Smalltalk technology evolved.

I hear you refer to Smalltalk as a programming language.  Most of the 
programmers I know will misunderstand this. To them, a program is a text 
written in a programming language. The text is the Real Thing, the 
executable is derived.

Contrast with  Alan's definition of object orientation: Objects are like 
computers communicating through a very fast network. With Smalltalk, 
communication became a first class citizen of computing. The Real Thing 
is now a universe of communicating objects. Objects are mustered on the 
fly to perform a task. There is no "Smalltalk Language" in the common 
sense of the word.  It is true that Smalltalk releases have a default 
language for compiling  methods within a class. The compiler is private 
to the class; other classes may use different compilers and, therefore, 
different languages. For example, VisualWorks had a class where the 
methods were written in SQL.

My main objection to calling Smalltalk a programing language is that it 
belittles its importance. IMO, Alan's concept of object orientation that 
is reified in Smalltalk is the the most important software invention 
since the first programming languages in the 1950s. It heralds an 
entirely new way of thinking about computing by replacing the underlying 
digital computer with a universe of communicating entities. I call it an 
/object computer/. (I see signs of this idea cropping up in other 
contexts as for example in "Unikernels: Rise of the Virtual Library 
Operating System <http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628>").

We are only scratching the surface of the object computer's 
capabilities. I hope we in the coming years will deepen our 
understanding of what this invention entails and create powerful ways to 
exploit it. Squeak and its derivatives give us a flying start.

I wish you all a productive and Happy New Year
--Trygve


-- 

Trygve Reenskaug      mailto: trygver at ifi.uio.no
Morgedalsvn. 5A       http://folk.uio.no/trygver/
N-0378 Oslo             http://fullOO.info
Norway                     Tel: (+47) 22 49 57 27
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