To Alan Kay, Thank you very much for your detailed clarification. I had actually already started reading your paper [1] (at http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html#29) before Richard O'Keefe's response mentioned earlier [2] (see http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/61329), but hadn't yet had enough time to read through it at that point.
Just for reference, here is how this misunderstanding apparently occurred: 1) On the date "Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:25:34 +0530," K. K. Subramaniam replied to me in the thread "Re: Re: Smalltalk Data Structures and Algorithms" [3] (see http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/beginners/2009-June/006270.html) on the squeak-beginners mailing list as follows: >Concepts in Squeak have their origins in biology rather than in >computational math. The boundary between 'hardware' and >'software' is blurry. See the reading list at > http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp >particularly "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. 2) On the date "Mon Jul 13 08:35:06 EDT 2009," Bulat Ziganshin wrote in the thread "[Haskell] 20 years ago" [4] (see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2009-July/021487.html) on the Haskell mailing list as follows: >Industrial programmers often think that functional programming is >"unnatural" and cannot be mastered by most of them. But 20 years ago >they thought the same about OOP > >The first widespead OOP system was a Turbo Pascal 5.5, released 1989. 3) To correct his misunderstanding about which widespread OOP system came first, I responded as follows [5] (see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2009-July/021489.html): >Just for the record, Turbo Pascal was preceded by a *pure* >object-oriented language, Smalltalk [1], as described below: > >>The Smalltalk language, which was developed at Xerox PARC (by Alan Kay >>and others) in the 1970s, introduced the term object-oriented >>programming to represent the pervasive use of objects and messages as >>the basis for computation.... Smalltalk and with it OOP were introduced to >>a wider audience by the August 1981 issue of Byte magazine. > >[...] > >[1] "Object-oriented programming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." >_Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia._ 13 July 2009. 14 July 2009. ><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming>. 4) Ziganshin then replied as follows [6] (see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2009-July/021490.html): >TP was a first OOP system sold in hundreds of thousands of copies. it >was "OOP for the masses" and its manual reflects what masses thought >about OOP those times - just the same that they think about FP now. >you can replace OOP with FP in the manual text i cited and read it as >modern text :) 5) The discussion continued for a few more posts, until one user then asked in private e-mail to have the topic moved to the Haskell-Cafe mailing list. Discussion continued there, with Ketil Malde re-introducing the topic, as follows [7] (http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-July/064185.html): >[redirected from hask...@] > >[...] > >Objects contain all kinds of hidden state and dependencies, and the >sheer unpredicatability of it all is the reason for the >anthropomorphics - it a symptom of a disease, not a desirable >quality. 6) Dissatisfied with his use of the term "disease" in relation to anthropomorphics, I responded as follows [8] (see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-July/064235.html): >Although I don't necessary agree with your choice of the term, I find >it interesting that you should use the biological term "disease"; >according to a post [1] entitled "Re: Re: Smalltalk Data Structures >and Algorithms," by K. K. Subramaniam, dated "Mon, 29 Jun 2009 >11:25:34 +0530," on the squeak-beginners mailing list (see >http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/beginners/2009-June/006270.html), >>Concepts in Squeak [a dialect and implementation of Smalltalk] have >their origins >>in biology rather than in computational math.... See the reading list at >>http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp >>particularly "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. 7) This is when Richard O'Keefe entered the thread, claiming that Subramaniam's above-mentioned post was incorrect, as follows [2] (again, see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-July/064270.html): >That posting is wrong. > >Smalltalk's roots are very firmly planted in Lisp, >with perhaps a touch of Logo (which also had its roots in Lisp). >The classic Smalltalk-76 paper even contains a meta-circular >interpreter, which I found reminiscent of the old Lisp one. >The "biological" metaphor in Smalltalk is actually a SOCIAL >metaphor: sending and receiving messages, and a "social" >model of agents with memory exchanging messages naturally >leads to anthropomorphisms. At this point, I considered responding that Smalltalk was in fact rooted in biology, so I skimmed your paper [1] for the term "LISP." However, I then came across such explanations as the following, which led me to think that O'Keefe was correct (at the end of section "II. 1967-69--The FLEX Machine, a first attempt at an OOP-based personal computer"): >The biggest hit for me while at SAIL in late '69 was to really >understand LISP. Of course, every student knew about car, cdr, >and cons, but Utah was impoverished in that no one there used >LISP and hence, no one had penetrated thye mysteries of eval and >apply. I could hardly believe how beautiful and wonderful the idea >of LISP was [McCarthy 1960]. I say it this way because LISP had not >only been around enough to get some honest barnacles, but worse, >there wee deep falws in its logical foundations. By this, I mean that >the pure language was supposed to be based on functions, but its >most important components---such as lambda expressions quotes, >and conds--where not functions at all, and insted ere called special >forms. Landin and others had been able to get quotes and cons in >terms of lambda by tricks that were variously clever and useful, but >the flaw remained in the jewel. In the practical language things >were better. There were not just EXPRs (which evaluated their >arguments0, but FEXPRs (which did not). My next questions was, >why on earth call it a functional language? Why not just base >everuything on FEXPRs and force evaluation on the receiving side >when needed? I could never get a good answer, but the question >was very helpful when it came time to invent Smalltalk, because this >started a line of thought that said "take the hardest and most >profound thing you need to do, make it great, an then build every >easier thing out of it". That was the promise of LiSP and the lure of >lambda--needed was a better "hardest and most profound" thing. >Objects should be it. That paragraph, together with the meta-circular interpreter given in the appendix, gave me the mistaken impression (at first) that O'Keefe was correct. After reading your response, I then looked through your paper again, and it seems that you had probably intended to emphasize the following paragraphs (in the "Introduction"), instead: >Smalltalk's design--and existence--is due to the insight that >everything we can describe can be represented by the recursive >composition of a single kind of behavioral building block that hides >its combination of state and process inside itself and can be dealt >with only through the exchange of messages. Philosophically, >Smalltalk's objects have much in common with the monads of >Leibniz and the notions of 20th century physics and biology.... > >In computer terms, Smalltalk is a recursion on the notion of computer >itself. Instead of dividing "computer stuff" into things each less strong >than the whole--like data structures, procedures, and functions which >are the usual paraphernalia of programming languages--each Smalltalk >object is a recursion on the entire possibilities of the computer. Thus its >semantics are a bit like having thousands and thousands of computer all >hooked together by a very fast network. Questions of concrete >representation can thus be postponed almost indefinitely because we >are mainly concerned that the computers behave appropriately, and are >interested in particular strategies only if the results are off or come back >too slowly. The difficulty is that the paper, as a whole, deals with influences from both LISP and biology, and without perusing the paper, it is easy to get a misconception as to which is the more important influence. This is most likely what gave O'Keefe the misconception that Smalltalk was rooted in LISP instead of biology. -- Benjamin L. Russell [1] Kay, Alan C. "The Early History of Smalltalk." Cambridge, Massachusetts: _History of Programming Languages: The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages_ (1993): 69-95. <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=154766.155364&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=45415434&CFTOKEN=84716013>. Also available at <http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html#29>. [2] O'Keefe, Richard. "Re: Re: [Haskell] Re: 20 years ago." gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe. Gmane. 16 July 2009. 27 July 2009. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/61329>. [3] Subramaniam, K. K. "Re: Re: Smalltalk Data Structures and Algorithms." The Beginners Archives. Squeak.org. 29 June 2009. 27 July 2009. <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/beginners/2009-June/006270.html>. [4] Ziganshin, Bulat. "20 years ago." gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general. Gmane. 13 July 2009. 27 July 2009. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17354>. [5] Russell, Benjamin L. "Re: 20 years ago." gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general. Gmane. 14 July 2009. 27 July 2009. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17356>. [6] Ziganshin, Bulat. "Re: Re: 20 years ago." gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general. Gmane. 14 July 2009. 27 July 2009. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17357>. [7] Malde, Ketil. "Re: [Haskell] Re: 20 years ago." gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe. Gmane. 14 July 2009. 27 July 2009. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/61243>. [8] Russell, Benjamin L. "Re: [Haskell] Re: 20 years ago." gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe. Gmane. 15 July 2009. 27 July 2009. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/61293>. On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:50:35 -0700 (PDT), Alan Kay <alan.n...@yahoo.com> wrote: >To WIMC > >This is an interesting example of an ever increasing web disease -- that is: >expressing mere opinions without foundations or checking. This one is easy, >because there is a readily available "Early History of Smalltalk" that the ACM >got me to write in 1993. So why wouldn't people just type "history of >smalltalk" into Google? (I don't know and I haven't been able to figure this >out). > >The very first hit finds this paper. (This one is not the best version of it >because someone just scanned the doc I wrote to get an HTML version and left >out lots of the pictures. But in looking at it, it seems to answer this >question very straightforwardly -- and that answer was given by "someone who >was actually there" and had a hand in the invention of Smalltalk, rather than >people with opinions from the side.) > >What is wrong? Why is mere opinion so dominating discussions held on the >easiest medium there has ever been that can provide substantiations with just >a little curiosity and work? Is the world completely reverting to an oral >culture of assertions held around an electronic campfire? > >As anyone who would be willing to read a few pages of writing will be able to >see, there were a number of important influences on the invention of objects >and then the invention of Smalltalk itself. > >Objects >a. The first two influences I saw were pure mathematics and molecular biology >(these were my two majors in college starting in 1958). >b. The second two I saw (in the very early 60s) were procedural abstractions >of date structures in the Burroughs 220 file system for the Air Force, and >especially the Burroughs B5000 computer hardware. >c. "In the air" in the ARPA community in 1966 was the intention to invent a >new kind of distributed network with "no central control or switching". >d. The next two I saw (in 1966 in the very same week) were Sketchpad and >Simula. Sketchpad was the dominant metaphor, but I had to see Simula a few >days later to understand just how great an idea Sketchpad was. > >These seven influences got me to thinking about one abstraction that was >indeed like a biological cell on the one hand and an entire computer on the >other which could be universally used at all levels of scales in both software >and hardware to "model anything" (including all the old inconvenient things >computing was using). This is where "message passing" took hold as something >stronger in concept and more loosely coupled and scalable system-wise. > >Somewhat asked me what I was doing and I said "object oriented computing". (I >should have thought much harder about the choice of terms) > >Smalltalk >a. In 1968 I saw Seymour Papert, Wally Feurzig, et al., and LOGO and got >interested in the idea of a computer and computer environment for children. >Right around that time I read Marvin Minsky's incredible book "Computation: >Finite and Infinite Machines" and he made a kind of Lisp from Goedel numbers >that was really beautiful. This got me to look at Lisp again and finally >understand what was truly great about it. In 1970 I was at the Stanford AI >Project on a postdoc and I started playing around with various kinds of >interpreters. > >b. In 1971 at PARC we had the wonderful funding to be able to try to really >make all this happen, and I started thinking about a programming language for >children that would not be harder to learn than LOGO but which would be object >oriented and also use Carl Hewitt's ideas in PLANNER as a way of communicating >in forms that could be used for deduction (this was somewhat like the >object-oriented Prologs that were done much later). > >c. In 1972, while working on all this "the bet" happened and I spent a few >weeks just making the simplest possible OOP language using McCarthy's >techniques first employed for Lisp in the late 50s. This is in the Appendix of >the "Early History" paper, and it is what Dan Ingalls implemented in a month >to get a first running version of Smalltalk. > >I most definitely still think of OOP at its best as being "biological". > >Best wishes (and happy reading) > >Alan > > > >> From: Benjamin L. Russell <dekudekup...@yahoo.com> >> Date: 24. Juli 2009 03:37:04 GMT-03:00 >> To: beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org >> Subject: [Newbies] Re: Smalltalk Data Structures and Algorithms >> Reply-To: "A friendly place to get answers to even the most basic questions >> about Squeak." <beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org> >> >> On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:25:34 +0530, "K. K. Subramaniam" >> <subb...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Concepts in Squeak have their origins >>> in biology rather than in computational math. The boundary between >>> 'hardware' >>> and 'software' is blurry. See the reading list at >>> http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp >>> particularly "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. >> >> Richard O'Keefe refutes this claim in his post [1] "Re: Re: [Haskell] >> Re: 20 years ago," dated "2009-07-16 01:38:14 GMT," on the >> Haskell-Cafe mailing list (see >> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/61329); >> _viz._: >> >>>>> Concepts in Squeak [a dialect and implementation of Smalltalk] have >>>> their origins >>>>> in biology rather than in computational math.... >>> >>> That posting is wrong. >>> >>> Smalltalk's roots are very firmly planted in Lisp, >>> with perhaps a touch of Logo (which also had its roots in Lisp). >>> The classic Smalltalk-76 paper even contains a meta-circular >>> interpreter, which I found reminiscent of the old Lisp one. >>> The "biological" metaphor in Smalltalk is actually a SOCIAL >>> metaphor: sending and receiving messages, and a "social" >>> model of agents with memory exchanging messages naturally >>> leads to anthropomorphisms. >>> >>> The other classic OO language, which inspired C++, which >>> inspired Java, which inspired C#, is Simula 67, which has >>> its roots in Algol 60. While Simula 67 was sometimes used >>> for simulating biological processes, the main background >>> was discrete event systems like factories and shops; there >>> are no biological metaphors in Simula. >> >> -- Benjamin L. Russell >> >> [1] O'Keefe, Richard. "Re: Re: [Haskell] Re: 20 years ago." >> gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe. Gmane. 16 July 2009. 24 July 2009. >> <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/61329>. >> --Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com >> http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ >> Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 >> "Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." >> -- Matsuo Basho^ >> _______________________________________________ >> Beginners mailing list >> Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org >> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners > > > > -- Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 "Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." -- Matsuo Basho^ _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
