Smalltalk (The Technium Podcast S02 E05)

The Technium

Smalltalk was one of the first object oriented programming languages and a software authoring environment that was highly influential in the history of computing.

We discuss its designer Alan Kay, his vision of personal computing, and the lasting influence of Smalltalk despite its limited commercial adoption.

Links/Resources:

• Actor Model - https://www.brianstorti.com/the-actor-model/
  • https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6272
• Smalltalk Demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uknEhXyZgsg
• Smalltalk Build your own Debugger - https://youtu.be/NqKyHEJe9_w?t=355
• Early History of Smalltalk - http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/
  • “A remarkable number of artists, scientists, philosophers are quite dull outside of their specialty (and one suspects within it as well). The first siren's song we need to be wary of is the one that promises a connection between an interesting pursuit and interesting thoughts. The music is not in the piano, and it is possible to graduate Juilliard without finding or feeling it.”
• Why was smalltalk not a commercial success?
  • http://www.wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/914
  • https://gbracha.blogspot.com/2020/05/bits-of-history-words-of-advice.html
• Lively and Caffine
  • https://lively-kernel.org/

Chapters:

0:00 Intros

1:57 The Retro Future

2:34 Origin and Motivation of Smalltalk

7:20 Object Orientation is about message passing

11:51 Meta-circular inspiration

14:31 Smalltalk is an entire environment

18:59 Designed with the GUI in mind

24:35 The Music isn't in the Piano

27:21 Taking a bet on the future

31:42 Surprising things about Smalltalk

34:27 Learning to Program By Reading "Literature”

39:56 Did Smalltalk Achieve It's Goals?

44:43 The Failure of Enterprise Smalltalk

52:30 Even Good Ideas Have to Survive the Marketplace

55:23 Big Ideas Meet Reality

===== About “The Technium” =====

The Technium is a weekly podcast discussing the edge of technology and what we can build with it. Each week, Sri and Wil introduce a big idea in the future of computing and extrapolate the effect it will have on the world.

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