Alan C. Kay
Skip Abstract Section
Abstract
Most ideas come from previous ideas. The sixties, particularly in the ARPA community, gave rise to a host of notions about “human-computer symbiosis” through interactive time-shared computers, graphics screens and pointing devices. Advanced computer languages were invented to simulate complex systems such as oil refineries and semi-intelligent behavior. The soon to follow paradigm shift of modern personal computing, overlapping window interfaces, and object-oriented design came from seeing the work of the sixties as something more than a “better old thing”. That is, more than a better way: to do mainframe computing; for end-users to invoke functionality; to make data structures more abstract. Instead the promise of exponential growth in computing/$/volume demanded that the sixties be regarded as “almost a new thing” and to find out what the actual “new things” might be. For example, one would compute with a handheld “Dynabook” in a way that would not be possible on a shared mainframe; millions of potential users meant that the user interface would have to become a learning environment along the lines of Montessori and Bruner; and needs for large scope, reduction in complexity, and end-user literacy would require that data and control structures be done away with in favor of a more biological scheme of protected universal cells interacting only through messages that could mimic any desired behavior.
Early Smalltalk was the first complete realization of these new points of view as parented by its many predecessors in hardware, language and user interface design. It became the exemplar of the new computing, in part, because we were actually trying for a qualitative shift in belief structures—a new Kuhnian paradigm in the same spirit as the invention of the printing press—and thus took highly extreme positions which almost forced these new styles to be invented.
- ACM, 1969 ACM SIGPLAN, Conference on Extensible Languages, May 1969.Google Scholar
- Arnheim,1969 Arnheim, Rudolf, Visual Thinking, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969, ISBN 0520013786.Google Scholar
- Balzer, 1967 Balzer, R.M., Dataless programming. Proceedings of the FJCC, July 1967.Google Scholar
- Barton, 1961 Barton, R.S., A new approach to the functional design of a digital computer, in Proceedings of the WJCC, May 1961.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Baecker, 1969 Baecker, Ronald M., Interactive computer-mediated animation, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Phd thesis, MIT, 1969, Supervisor:Edward L. Glaser.Google Scholar
- Bitzer, 1966 Bitzer, D.L, and Slottow, H.G., The plasma display panel --- a digitally addressable display with inherent memory, InProcmtings of the FICC, November 1966.Google Scholar
- Bobrow,1977 Bobrow, D.C., and Winograd, T., An overview of KRL, a knowledge representation language, in Cognitive Science, Vol. 1, (1) (pp. 3-46), 1977.Google Scholar
- Borning, 1979 Borning, Alan, Thinglab DA Constraint-oriented simulation laboratory, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, #SSL-79-3, July 1979.Google Scholar
- Bruner, 1960 Bruner, Jerome S., The Process of Education, Harvard/Belknap Press, 1960.Google Scholar
- Bruner 1966 Towards a Theory of Instruction, Harvard/Belknap Press,1966, ISBN 0-674-89700-5.Google Scholar
- Brand, 1972 Brand, Stewart, 1972, Fanatic life & symbolic death among the computer bums, R~lling Stone Magazine, December 1972.Google Scholar
- Burroughs,1961 Burroughs Corp., The Descriptor ---a definition of the BSO00 information processing system, Detroit:Michigan, Bulletin No. 5000-20002-P, February 1961.Google Scholar
- Bush,1945 Bush, Vannevar., 1945, A scientist looks at tomorrow as we may think, Atlantic Monthly, Vo1176, No. 1, (p. 101), July I945.Google Scholar
- Byte, 1981 Byte Magazine, Issue on Smalltalk, Christopher Morgan, ed., Volume 6, number 8, August, 1981.Google Scholar
- Carnap, 1947 Carnap, Rudolf, Meaning and Necessity, A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1947.Google Scholar
- Colmerauer,1978 Colmerauer, .Main., Metamorphosis grammars, in Natural Language Communication with Computers, Boic, L., ed., (pp. 133-189), West Germany: Springer-Verlag, 1978, ISBN: 3 540 08911 X. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Colmerauer,1981 et. al, Last steps towards an ultimate PROLOG, in Proceedings oft~re 7th International Joint Conference on Artificial ntelligence, Vol. 2, (pp. 947-948), August 1981. Available from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Menlo Park, CA.Google Scholar
- Colmerauer,1983 __, PROLOG in I0 figures, in Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 1, Distributed by William Kaufmann Inc, Los Altos, CA. ( pp. 487-499), August 1983.Google Scholar
- Clark, 1957 Clark, Wesley .A., The lincoln tx-2 computer development, inProceedings of the WJCC, (pp. 143-145), February 1957.Google Scholar
- Clark, 1962 The General Purpose Computer in the Life Sciences Laboratory, inEngineering and the Life $c/ences, NAS-NRC Report, Washington DC, April 1962.Google Scholar
- Clark ,1965 and Molnar, C.E., A Description of the LINC, inComputers in Biomedical Research, Vol. 1, Chapter 2, R.W. Stacy and B.D. Waxman, ed., Academic Press, New York, 1965.Google Scholar
- Clark, 1966 _______, Programming the LINC, Computer Systems Lab, Washington University, St. Louis, Technical Report, 1966.Google Scholar
- Clark, 1988 . The LINC was early and small, in A History of Pev~onal Workstations, Adele Goldberg, ed., New York: New York, ACM Press, (pp. 347-391), 1988, ISBN 020 111 2590. Google Scholar
- Conway, 1963 Conway, Melvin E., Design of a separable transition-diagram compiler, inCommunications of the ACM, Vol. 6, No. 7, (pp. 396-408), July 1963. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Davis, I964 Davis, M.R., and Ellis, T.O., The RAND tablet: A man.machine graphical communication device, report .#RM-4122-ARPA, CA: RAND, I964.Google Scholar
- Dahl, 1972 Dahl, O.q., and Hoare, C.A.R., Hierarchlal Program Structure. In DabGoogle Scholar
- Deutsch, 1966 Deutsch, L.P., Lisp for the PDP-I, inThe Programming Langmage LISP; its Operation and Applications, Editors: Edmund C. Berkeley and Daniel G. Bobrow, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, ix, 382p, 1966.Google Scholar
- Deutsch,1973 ______, A lisp machine with very compact programes, in Proceedings of the 3rd International loint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Stanford, CA, 1973.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Deutsch,1983 __.._____, The dorado Smailtalk-.80 implementation: hardware architecture's impact on software architecture, in Smalltalk.80 Bits of History, Words of Advice., Krasner. G., ed., Addison-Wesley, (pp. 1 t3-126), 1983.Google Scholar
- Deutsch, 1989 The past, present, and f~ of smalltalk, in Proceedings of the 3rd'F, uropean Conference on Object Oriented l)rogramming, Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
- Engelbart, 1968 Engelbart, Douglas, C. and English, William, K., A research center for augmenting human intellect, in Proceedings of the FJCC, Voi. 33, Part one, (pp. 395-410), December I968. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Farber,1964 Farber, D.J., Griswaid, R.E., Polensky, F.P., "SNOBOL, a Strin$ Manipulation Langtazge" JACM 11, I964, 21-30 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Feldman, 1977 Feldman, Jerome A., A formal semantics for computer languages and itsapp{ication in a compilercompiler, in Communications of the ACM, (pp. 3-9) January 1977. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Fisher, 1970 Fisher, David Allen, Control structures for programming languages, PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 1970. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Goldberg, 1977 Goldberg, Adele and Kay, `Man C., Teaching Smalltalk (2 papers): Methods for teaching the programming language Smalltalk and Smalltalk in the classroom, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, June 1977.Google Scholar
- Goldberg, 1978 , Smailtalk simulation kit documentation, Xerox PaIo Alto Research Center, LRG Internal Note, Feb 1978.Google Scholar
- Goldberg, 1983 , and Robson, D., Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation, Addison Wesley, _Reading, Mass., 1983. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gombrich,1960 Gombrich, E.H., Art & Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, NY: Pantheon Books, 1960.Google Scholar
- Groner, 1966 Groner, Gabriel, Real-tree recognition of hand printed text, CA: RAND, Report #RM-5016-ARPA, October 1966.Google Scholar
- Hewitt, 1969 Hewitt, Carl E., Planner: A language for manipulating models and proving theorems in a robot, I969, MIT, Cambridge: MA, Project MAC., AI memo #168Google Scholar
- Hewitt, 1973 Bishop, P.; GreiL I.; Smith, B.; Matson, T.; Steiger, R., ACTOR induction and recta-evaluation, inConference Record of ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, 1-3 Oct. I973, (pp.IS3-168), ACM, New York, NY, 1973. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hewitt, 1977 , and Baker, Henry Jr., Actors in continuous functtonals, Cambridge: MA, MIT, Laboratory for Computer Sciences, 1977, MI'r/LCS/TR-194, MrT, Laboratory for Computer Sciences, Technical Report #194.Google Scholar
- Ingalls, 1978 Ingalls, Daniel H., The Smalltalk-76 Programming System, Design and Implementation, in 5th AG~ Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Tucson, Ariz, Jan., 1978 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ingalls,1981 ________, The smaUtalk graphics kemal, Byte, Voi. 6, Number 8, (p. 168), August, 1981.Google Scholar
- Ingalls,1983 , The evolution of the smalltalk virtual machine, in SmalItalk-80 Bits of History, Words of Advice., Krasner, G., ed., Addison-Wesley, (pp 9-28), 1983.Google Scholar
- Irons, 1970 Irons, E.T., 1970, Experience with an extensible language, in Communications of the ACM, voi.13, no.l, (pp.31-40), January I970. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Joss,1964 Shaw, J.C., {OSS: A Designer's View of an Experimental Online Computer System, CA: RAND, #P- 2922,1964.Google Scholar
- Joss, 1978 , JOSS Session, in History of Programming Languages, ed. Richard L. Wexelblat, New York: Academic Press, xxiii, Chapter X, 1981. ISBN: 0127450408. Conference: History of Programming Languages Conference (1978: Los Angeles, Calif.)Google Scholar
- Kaehler, 1981 Kaehler, Edwin B., 1981, Virtual memory for an object-oriented langauge, Byte, August 1981.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1968 Kay, Alan C., Flex: a flexible extensible language, M.S. thesis, University of Utah, .May 1968.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1969 ~ The reactive engine, PhD thesis, University of Utah, September 1969.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1970 , Ramblings towards a KiddiKomp, in Stanford AI Project Lab Notebook, November 1970.Google Scholar
- Kay,1971 ~ Display transducers, in Pendery Papers for Parc Planning Purposes, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, June 1971.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1971a ~ Draft design for miniCOM, InPARC Lab Book, Xerox Palo Air0 Research Center, August 1971.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1971b ,Computer Structures-Past Present and Future, Panel paper, in Proceedings of the FJCC, Vol. 39 November 1971Google Scholar
- Kay, 1972 _______., MiniCOM proposal, in PARC Lab Book, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, May 1972.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1972a , Learning research group 3 year plan, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, July 1972.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1972b ~ A personal computer for children of all ages, in Proceedings of theACM National Conference, Boston, August 1972.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1972c . , A dynamic medium for creative thought, in Precedings o/the National Council o/Teachers of English Conference, Minneapolis, November 1972.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1972d , Smalltalk Blue B~k, Fall 1972.Google Scholar
- Kay, 1976 . Goldberg, Adele., ed., Smalitalk Instruction Manual SSL-76-6, May 1976.Google Scholar
- Kay,1977 ,1977, Microelectronics and the personal computer, Scientific American, (pp. 125-136) September 1977. and Goldberg" Adele., Personal dynamic media, IEEE Computer, Vol. I0, (pp. 31-41), MarchGoogle Scholar
- Kay,1977a i977'. Reprinted in A History of PersonalWorkstations, Academic Press, 1988.Google Scholar
- Kay,1979 Programming your own computer, Science Year 1979, World Book Encyclopedia, 1979.Google Scholar
- Kay,1984 ,1984, Computer software,,Scient~c Amuican, September 1984.Google Scholar
- Kay,1990 , User interface: a personal view, In TheArt o/Human-Computer Interface Design, ed., Brenda Laurel, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.,1990, (pp. 191-207) ISBN 0 201 51797 3.Google Scholar
- Kay,1991 .1991, Computers, networks, and learning, Scientific American, Vol. 265, No. 3, (pp. 138-148) September 1991.Google Scholar
- Kiczales, 1991 Kiczales, Gregor, Des Rivieres, Jim; Bobrow, Daniel G., The Art of the Mttaobject Protocol, Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, viii, 335 p.; 1991, ISBN 0262111586. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Knuth, 1971 Knuth, Donald E and Floyd, Robert W., Notes on avoiding 'go to'statements, in Information Processing Letters, volume, I, number I, February 1971.Google Scholar
- Knuth, 1974 ~ Structured programming with 'go to" statements, in ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 6, no. 4, "(pp. 261-301), December 1974. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Krasner, 1983 K.rasner, Glenn., ed., Smalltalk.80 Bits of History, Words of Advice., Addison-Wesley, 1983, ISBN 0 201 116693. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lampson,1966 Lampson,, CAL reference manual, Project GENIE documentation, Computer Center, UC Berkeley, 1966.Google Scholar
- Lampson,1966a . , A user machine in a time sharing system, in Proceedings of the IEEE, 54(I2): (pp.1744-1766), December 1966.Google Scholar
- Lampson, 1969 . An overview of the CAL time.sharing system, Computer Center, U.C. Berkeley, September 1969. Originally entitled On reliable and extendable operating systems, September 5,1969.Google Scholar
- Lampson 1972 Why Alto?, In PARC Lab Book. Xerox Paio Alto Research Center.Google Scholar
- Lampson,1988 Personal distributed computing: alto and ethemet software, in A History of Personal Workstations, Adele Goldberg, ed., New York:New York, ACM Press, 1988, ISBN 020 2590. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Landin, 1965 Landin, P.J., A correspondence between ALGOL 60 and Church's Iamlxla notation: Part 1, in Communications of the ACIVl, Vol. 8, No. 2, February 1965. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Landin, 1966 ____.., The next 7(30 programming languages, inCommunications of the ACM, Vol. 9, No. 3, March 1966. (pp. 157-164). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Licklider,1960 Licklider, J.C.IL, Man-computer symbiosis, in IRE Transactions onHuman Factors in Electronics, HFE-I: 4-11, 1960.Google Scholar
- LRG, 1976 Leamin8 Research Croup, Dynamic Personal Media, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Report #SSL- 76-7, June 1976.Google Scholar
- McCarthy, 1960 McCarthy, John P., Part 1, Recursive functions of symbolic expressons and their computation by machine, in Communications of the ACM, Vol. 3, Number 4, (pp. 184-195) April 1960. Google ScholarDigital Library
- McCarthy, 1962 , et.al., LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual, Cambridge: MR" Press, 1962.Google Scholar
- Minsky, 1970 Minsky, Marvin., Form and content in computer science, inThe }ourmaI of the Association for Computing Machinery, Vo117, Number 2, (pp. 197-215), April 1970. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Minsky, 1974 A framework for representing knowledge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Memo No. 306, June 1974. Reprinted in The Psychclc~y of Computer Vision, McGraw-Hill, 1975.Google Scholar
- Newman,1973 Newman W.M.,and Sprouil, R.F., Principles of interactive computer graphics, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nygaard, 1966 Nygaard, Kdsten, and Dahl, Ole-Johan, Simula -- an ALGOL-based simulation language, in Communicatons oftheACM, IX, 9, (pp. 671-678), September 1966. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nygaard, 1978 Early history of simula, in History of Programming Laguages, ed. Richard L. Wexelblat, New York: Academic Press, 1981, ISBN 012 745040 8. This is the proceedings of the ACM Sigplan History of Programming Languages Conference held in Los Angeles, June 1-3,1978.Google Scholar
- Papert, 1971 Papert, S., Teaching children thinking, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artifical Intelligence Laboratory Memo 247, LOGO Memo 2, 1971. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Papert, 1971a , Teaching children to be mathematicians vs. teaching about mathematics, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artifical intelligence Laboratory Memo 249, LOGO Memo 4, 1971.Google Scholar
- Papert, 1973 . Uses of technology to enhance education, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technolog, y, Artifical Intelligence Laboratory Memo 298, LOGO Memo 8, 1973.Google Scholar
- Papert, 1976 ______ , Abelson, H., Bamberger. J, and Goldstein, r c~oo~ Progress l~port 1973-1975, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Memo 356, LOGO Memo 22, 1976.Google Scholar
- Papert, 1976 _______, Proposal to the National Science Foundation: An Evaluative Study of Modem Technology in Education, Appendix One: LOGO memo 8, Appendix Two: LOGO memo 27, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, memo 371, LOGO memo 26, 1976.Google Scholar
- Papert, 1976a ~ ,; Solomon, C.J., A Case Study of a Young Child doing Turtle Graphics in LOGO, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Memo 375, LOC_~ Memo 28, 1976.Google Scholar
- Papert, 1979 __.____.,; Watt, D., DiSessa, A., Weir, $.,. Final Report of the Bmokline LOGO Project. Part If: Project Summary and Data Analysis, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Memo 545, LOGO Memo 53,1979.Google Scholar
- Perry,1985 Perry, Tekla,'Ins/de the PARC: the "Information Architects" IEEE Spectrum, October 1985.Google Scholar
- Plato Plato, "l'imaeus & Phaedrus:The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Benjamin lowett, Great Books of the Western World, Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed., Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.Google Scholar
- Popek, 1984 Popek, G., et. al., The Locus Distributed Operating System, Cambridge: MR" Press, 1984.Google Scholar
- Ross, 1960 Ross, D.T., and ~TVard, J.E., Picture and pushbutton languages, chapter 8 of lnvesHgations in Computer. Aided Design, interim engineering report 8436.-IR-1, Electrical Systems Lab, MIT, May 1960.Google Scholar
- Ross, 1961 A generalized technique for symbol manipulation and numerical calculation, in Communications of the ACM, Vol. 4, no. 3, (pp. 147-150) March 1961. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Rovner, 1968 Rovner, P.D, An AMBIT/G programming language implementation, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Mass., June 1968.Google Scholar
- Saunders, 1977 Saunders, Steven E. Improved FM audio synthesis methods for real-time digital music generation, in Computer Music }ournal, Vol. 1, No. 1, February, I977. Repdntecl in Computer Music, Roads, C. and Strawn, J. editors, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.Google Scholar
- Schorre, 1963 Shorre, D.V., META II-- A syntax-oriented compiler writing language, UCLA computing facility,Google Scholar
- Shoch, 1979 Shoch, J.F., 1979, An overview of the programming language Smalltalk-72, In $1GPLAN Notices, vol. 14, no. 9, (pp. 64-73), September 1979. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Soloway, 1989 Soloway, Elliot and Spohrer, James C., ed.,$tudying the Novice Programmer, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1989, ISBN 0-8058-(XT2. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Smith,1975 Smith, David Canfield, Pygmallion, PhD thesis, Stanford Univ., 1975Google Scholar
- Strachey Stmchey, Christopher, Toward a formal semantics, United Kingdom.Google Scholar
- Sutherland, 1963 Sutherland, Ivan C., Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system, MR` Lincoln Laboratory, Technical Report 296, January 1963.Google Scholar
- Sutherland, 1963a ibid, in Proceedings of the 5JCC, Vol. 23, (pp. 329-346), 1963.Google Scholar
- Sutherland, 1968 A head-mounted three dimensional display, inProceedings of the FICC, (p. 757), 1968.Google Scholar
- Tesler, 1973 Tesler, Lawrence., et.al., The lisp-70 pattern rnacher, in Proceedings ~fthe 3rd International }oint Conference on Artificial lntelIigmce, Stanford, CA, 1973.Google Scholar
- Tesler, 1977 ~ Smalltalk-76 documentation, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Learning Research Group Internal Note, 1977.Google Scholar
- Tesler,1981 ._._.., 1981, The smalltalk environment, Byte, Vol. 6, Number 8, (p. 90), August, 198I.Google Scholar
- Thacker, 1972 Tracker, C.P., A personal computer with microparallel processing, Xerox Pato Alto Research Center, December 1972.Google Scholar
- Thacker 1982 , et. al., Alto: a personal computer, inComputer Structures: Principles and Examples, Siewiorek, D. et.al, editors, Chapter 33, McGraw-Hill, 1982.Google Scholar
- Thacker, 1986 , Personal distributed computing: the alto and ethernet hardware, in A History of Personal Workstations, Adele Goldberg" ed., New York: New York, ACM Press, (pp.267-290), 1988, ISBN 020 Ill 2590. Google Scholar
- Van Wijngaarden, 1968 Van Wijngaarden, A., ed., Draft report on ALGOL 68, Mathematisch Centrum, MR 93, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1968.Google Scholar
- Van Wijngaarden Generalized ALGOL, Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. -Google Scholar
- Wirth, 1966 Wirer, N.K. and Weber, H., EULER: A generalization of ALGOL, and its formal definition: Part I, inCommunications of the ACM, Vol 9, No. 1, (pp. 13-25), Jan. 1966 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Winston, 1970 Winston, Patrick H., Learning structural descriptions from examples, PhD thesis, MIT, January 1970.Google Scholar
- Zahn, 1974 Zahn, C.T, Jr., A control statement for natural top-down structured programming" inProceedings of the Colloquesurla Programmation, April t974, Paris. A revised version of this paper appears, under the same title, in Programming Symposium, vol. 19 of the lecture notes in Computer Science, Robinet, B., ed., Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1974, (pp. 170-180). Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- The early history of Smalltalk
Recommendations
The early history of Smalltalk
History of programming languages---IIMost ideas come from previous ideas. The sixties, particularly in the ARPA community, gave rise to a host of notions about "human-computer symbiosis" through interactive time-shared computers, graphics screens, and pointing devices. Advanced computer ...
The early history of Smalltalk
HOPL-II: The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languagesMost ideas come from previous ideas. The sixties, particularly in the ARPA community, gave rise to a host of notions about “human-computer symbiosis” through interactive time-shared computers, graphics screens and pointing devices. Advanced computer ...
Making history
History of programming languages---IIWhat we are doing here this morning is making history. We are making history in what would seem an obvious way. That it, we are here over the next few days to hear from the people who have made history through their creative work. We are here to here ...
Reviews
John Bradley Evans
Kay gives us a fascinating insight into the twilight zone between industry and academia on the one hand and hardware and software developers on the other. We are offered a view into the genesis of many features with which we are now familiar: windows, interactive computing, and object orientation. Despite the platitudes of software engineers, Kay reveals that real development proceeds at a cracking pace untrammeled by progress reports, “publish-or-perish,” or interference from higher-up management, at least for a certain period. Kay also describes the considerable influence of education and education philosophy on the development of Smalltalk, and his tale is enlivened by philosophical quotes. The current fascination with personal computing is described as “inverse vandalism” where systems are built simply because they are easy to build, whereas real problems have been forgotten in the race for bigger, faster ways of operating. Noticeably absent from the array of philosophical worthies is the name of Wittgenstein, who had some relevant things to say about simplicity, which might cast doubt on the underlying LISP-type reductionist paradigm: basically, he reckoned that, to be of any use, logic is inevitably hairy. So perhaps the seekers of universal logical completeness are chasing phantoms anyway. As regards today's computing, Kay's tone contains a hint of resignation. While the industry shrinks, the lamb has lain down with the lion, and the lion is shedding his mane. Nevertheless, this paper is an exciting and rewarding read.
Access critical reviews of Computing literature here
Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.
Comments