Ask HN: help me find something Alan Kay said

1 pointsjcoglan17y ago3 comments

A couple weeks ago there was a link doing the rounds wherein Alan Kay was seen stating that the important thing about Smalltalk was message passing, as opposed to OO in itself. I've been Googling high and low and can't find it again -- does anybody know where it is? Thanks in advance.

3 comments

3 comments · 2 top-level

pclark17y ago· 1 in thread

"OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them"

Source: email [1]

[1] http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...

jcoglanOP17y ago

Not the exact link I was looking for, but useful nonetheless - cheers.

RiderOfGiraffes17y ago

http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...

From here : http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/alanKay+talk

    Alan Kay regrets the terminology, object orientated,
    thinking later that message orientated would have
    expressed it better.

This seems the most definitive:

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-...

    Just a gentle reminder that I took some pains at the
    last OOPSLA to try to remind everyone that Smalltalk
    is not only NOT its syntax or the class library, it
    is not even about classes. I'm sorry that I long ago
    coined the term "objects" for this topic because it
    gets many people to focus on the lesser idea.

    The big idea is "messaging" -- that is what the kernal
    of Smalltalk/Squeak is all about ...

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