On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 07:47:20 -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >On Jul 13, 3:20 pm, Wayne Brehaut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 06:01:56 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers >> >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >Chris Carlen a écrit : >> >> Hi: >> >> >> From what I've read of OOP, I don't get it. I have also found some >> >> articles profoundly critical of OOP. I tend to relate to these articles. >> >> === 8< ===
=== 8< === >> Under a claim of Academic Impunity (or was that "Immunity"), here's >> another historical tid-bit. In a previous empolyment we once had a >> faculty applicant from CalTech who knew we were using Simula as our >> introductory and core language in our CS program, so he visited Xerox >> PARC before coming for his inteview. His estimate ofAlan Kayand >> Smalltalk at that time (early 80s) was that "They wanted to implement >> Simula but didn't understand it--so they invented Smalltalk and now >> don't understand _it_!" >> >> wwwayne >> >> === 8< === > >A couple of notes on this post. > >Alan Kay has always publicly credited Simula as the direct inspiration >for Smalltalk, and if you know the man and his work, this implication >of taking credit for the first OOP language is not true, it is a >credit assigned to him by others, and one which he usually rights when >confronted with it. I know this, and was perhaps a little too flippant in my all-inclusive statement "self-serving propaganda from Xerox PARC,Alan Kay, and Smalltalk adherents everywhere!", for which I apologize. But it was made with humorous intent, as I had hoped the opening "Oh you young'uns, not versed in The Ancient Lore, but filled with self-serving propaganda..." would imply. A more accurate and unhumorous statement of my opinion is that it is Smalltalk adherents who know virtually nothing of the history of OOP--and even some who do--who did and still do make such claims, both personally and in the published literature of OOP. And my statement about a prospective faculty member's opinion was just that: a historical anecdote, and the expression of an early 80s opinion by a professional CS professor and researcher in formal semantics (which may have been part of his distrust of the Smalltalk team's "understanding" of Smalltalk) . The opinion he expressed was his and not my own, and I was just recording (what I thought might be) an amusing anecdote in a context in which I thought it appropriate: discussion of what OOP is, and after Bruno made the claim: "OO is about machines - at least as conceveid by Alan Key, who invented the term and most of the concept." I don't think my recording it here should be construed as my opinion of either Smalltalk or its creators (at that time or now). As often happens in many arenas, the creator of an idea can lose control to the flock, and many publications can get accepted if referrees themselves don't know the facts or take care to check them before recommending publication--which probably explains why so many publications (especially in conference proceedings) on OOP in the 80s and 90s completely omitted any mention of Simula: so much so that I once intended writing a paper on "Ignorance of Simula Considered Harmful." On the other hand, anytyhing you may have inferred about my distaste for those who doesn't bother to learn anything of the history of a subject, then make false or misleading claims, and don't bother to correct themselves when questioned, is true. >You may be confused with the fact that "object oriented >programming"was a term which I believe was first used by Alan and his >group at PARC, so perhaps the coining of the term is what is being >referenced by others. No, I have been at more than one CS (or related area) conference where a Smalltalk aficionado has stated unequivocally that Kay invented OOP and that Smalltalk was the first OOPL. The last I recall for sure was WebNet 2000, where a (quite young) presenter on Squeak made that statement, and was not at all certain what Simula was when I asked whether it might actually have been the first more than 10 years before Smalltalk 80. So his claim, and that of many others, explicitly or implicitly, is that not only the term, but most (or all) of the concept, and (often) the first implementation of OOP was by Kay and his Xerox PARC team in Smalltalk 80. >Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the tone of your post conveys an animosity >that did not exist between the original Smalltalk and Simula >inventors; Nygard and Kay were good friends, and admired each others' >work very much. Yes, you are very much mistaken (as I note above), and appear not to have understood the intended humorous tone of my posting. wwwayne > >Bonnie MacBird > -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
