[HN Gopher] The Early History of Smalltalk (1993)
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The Early History of Smalltalk (1993)
Author : Jtsummers
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-04-17 17:08 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (worrydream.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worrydream.com)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Now that this is back here and I've realized it (thanks second
| chance pool!) some other content you may find interesting if you
| liked this one:
|
| Dan Ingalls' _Evolution of Smalltalk_ :
| http://worrydream.com/refs/Ingalls%20-%20The%20Evolution%20o....
| This covers some of the same time period as Kay's article but
| goes on through the early commercial history of Smalltalk and the
| development of Squeak.
|
| Lots of free books courtesy of Stephane Ducasse and the people
| who released them for free and OCR'd them:
| http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/. I'm reading The
| Bluebook, _Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation_ by
| Goldberg and Robson, presently.
|
| And if you either don't want to install Smalltalk on your system
| or want to use an older version:
| https://smalltalkzoo.thechm.org/. With a writeup about it here:
| https://computerhistory.org/blog/introducing-the-smalltalk-z...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I've been on a Smalltalk kick the last couple of weeks
| (studied/used it in college, remembered many of the ideas but had
| never done a proper deep dive before). This was one of the papers
| I read and found particularly interesting, not just for its talk
| about Smalltalk itself but also about teaching programming (both
| to kids and adults).
|
| There have been several past discussions. Ones with more than 1
| comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25012425 - Nov 7, 2020 (28
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913668 - Sept 4, 2018 (69
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9907556 - July 18, 2015 (5
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9588316 - May 22, 2015 (5
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7926141 - June 21, 2014 (10
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1311282 - May 1, 2010 (17
| comments)
| cubano wrote:
| Fucking Smalltalk...
|
| This...what do you call it? A mindset? A way of life? The answer
| to all questions? Because you cannot simply call it a programming
| language that's for sure.
|
| I started programming in 1979 and throughout my long career I
| have constantly been exposed to various Smalltalk articles and
| genuflections.
|
| Wow! Just look! Fucking EVERYTHING is an object! Holy shit can
| you believe the audacity of the developers?
|
| Along with LISP, Smalltalk is just one of Holy Shrines That One
| Must Visit In Order To Complete One's Path As A Real Programmer.
|
| I almost think "Ancient Religion" should be the right moniker...
| a4isms wrote:
| I started programming around 1972 or so, so we are likely of
| similar vintage. I think we tend to find what we seek. I have
| found much to learn from Smalltalk and Lisp in the fifty years
| since I first wrote FORTRAN programs on punch cards at UofT's
| High-Speed Job Stream, and while yes, there are various people
| whose enthusiasm and narrow focus rivals any religious cult...
|
| Here's the thing. Some people will hate a thing so much they'll
| accuse you of professional misconduct for using it. Seriously,
| you can find people who say, in writing, that programming
| without static type-checking is professional misconduct.
|
| Should that stop us from using JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby,
| Python, &c.?
|
| No. Although hey, at least read their arguments with an open
| mind and decide for yourself.
|
| On the other side, there will be people who love a thing so
| much that they can't imagine using anything else. We may not
| love it as much as they do, but should that stop us from using
| that thing if we like?
|
| Also no.
|
| Bottom line: Why judge a thing by what the most extreme
| opinions about the thing are, or how extreme those opinions
| are? Judge by its utility for you.
| gjvc wrote:
| >I started programming in 1979 and throughout my long career I
| have constantly been exposed to various Smalltalk articles and
| genuflections.
|
| With that experience, what do you think of the state and
| directions of the computer industry today?
| rwmj wrote:
| This video of Dan Ingalls demonstrating SmallTalk on an Alto
| didn't get any traction when I posted it, but it's really quite
| interesting:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30882555
| [deleted]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > Philosophically, Smalltalk's objects have much in common with
| the monads of Leibniz and the notions of 20th century physics and
| biology
|
| Love this line as this was definitely my impression of monads
| when venturing into Haskell-land...
|
| The whole history of Smalltalk is interesting and it's an
| interesting way to reason about data and behaviour. And even if
| Smalltalk is obscure, C++, Java, Ruby, Python and others aren't,
| and OOP remains a great way to model many domains.
| chillpenguin wrote:
| I could be wrong because I don't know much about Leibniz's
| monads, but aren't those a completely different thing from
| Haskell monads?
|
| I don't just mean "slightly different" like how arrays in
| javascript are slightly different than arrays in C. I mean like
| they are completely different ideas/concepts that happen to
| share the same word. I think "Homonym" is the right word for
| this situation?
| no_wizard wrote:
| Here's an archive.org link to the site, since HTTPS doesn't
| appear to be valid
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220420150543/http://worrydream...
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