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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

1401 points alankay | 5 comments | 20 Jun 16 18:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.973s | source

This request originated via recent discussions on HN, and the forming of HARC! at YC Research. I'll be around for most of the day today (though the early evening).
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emaringolo ◴[20 Jun 16 18:31 UTC] No.11940114[source]▶
Do you still see an advantage of using Smalltalk (like Squeak/Pharo) as a general purpose language/tool to build software or do you think that most of its original ideas were somehow "taken" by other alternatives?
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1. alankay1 ◴[20 Jun 16 18:49 UTC] No.11940275[source]▶
Smalltalk in the 70s was "just a great thing" for its time. The pragmatic fact of also wanting to run in it real-time fast enough for dynamic media and interactions and to have it fit within the 64Kbyte (maybe a smidge more) Alto rendered it not nearly as scalable into the future in many dimensions as the original ideas intended.

We have to think about why this language is even worth mentioning today (partly I think by comparison ...)

replies(1): >>11940389 #
2. emaringolo ◴[20 Jun 16 19:00 UTC] No.11940389[source]▶
I think it is the only language that enables a single individual to understand a big and complex system like the development environment itself.
replies(2): >>11940797 #>>11941425 #
3. sebastianconcpt ◴[20 Jun 16 19:44 UTC] No.11940797[source]▶
Mmm yeah. The exploration, instant feedback and minimalist syntax are features that I wish more people would value.

I "secretly" think that Self would have achieved that too (and even better because is not constrained to the artificial abstraction of classes) but it never had a chance due to its unsuccessful IDE.

Our cognitive system converges too much to objectify things to ignore. We compulsively do that. There is something about objects that fits our cognitive system better. It's a waste if we don't take full advantage of it.

replies(2): >>11941069 #>>11941070 #
4. philippeback ◴[20 Jun 16 20:08 UTC] No.11941069{3}[source]▶
There is a gang here.
5. nickpsecurity ◴[20 Jun 16 20:46 UTC] No.11941425[source]▶
LISP machines, Solo, Edison, Oberon... quite a few systems and languages had that capability if the users and/or developers so desired. In the write-up he gave me, Kay seemed to suggest it had a unique combination of OOP support, conceptual brevity, and especially the late binding. I mean, good performance and stuff too. Those other things were considered key advantages over other systems I named.

Maybe also easier to match to hardware than LISP or FP DSL's along lines of Haskell. I'm a little out of my depth there, though. I just remember LISP machine and OS crowd having to innovate hard to fight performance issues. PreScheme & T being exceptions where low-level was easy.