The Early History of Smalltalk

We read one of the great articles by Alan Kay, inventor of Smalltalk.

[alinsoar]

I am amazed this level of discussion to be present on YouTube

[ytflix]

Eric, this is a GEM, incredible to find discussion of this at this LEVEL of depth on Youtube or any corner of the internet. Really wonderful to hear you underline that a) state-averse, simplicity-obsessed cultures such as Clojure/Haskell/etc. are part of the story here, and b) there is genuine common-ground between "REAL OOP" (ala Kay) and Lisp/FP culture. As Kay stated on Quora, FP and real OOP are not opposed, but interrelated in the drama of discovering the best ideas in software.
Its very refreshing, the way you picked selections of the text that steer to the that common-ground we have.

[aerialdude]

At the end of the video you said you would appreciate ideas for papers to read, so I'd like to recommend a few ideas. I'd like more follow up on Alan Kay related stuff, so I'll recommend some papers that Kay himself has recommended.

* John McCarthy - "Situations, Actions, and Causal Laws" and "Programs With Common Sense"
* Doug Engelbart - Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework
* Ivan Sutherland - Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system
* Val Schorre - Meta II - A Syntax Oriented Compiler Writing Language
* Bob Barton - A New Approach to the Functional Design of a Digital Computer
* JCR Licklider - Man-Computer Symbiosis

Thanks for doing these kind of videos! I think this sort of thing is lacking in our industry right now.

[nicholasmontano]

Incredible video. Thank you so much for your analysis, especially around the big idea of getting rid of assignment. I've been diving in deep to understanding the work of Kay and the other Xerox PARC people, and they truly had some incredibly valuable ideas that have been lost by the wayside.

[aerialdude]

This is one of my favorite papers of all time, cool to see a video on it.

[Kenbomp]

Yes we should give up state because it's too hard to make good big things with state. Cpus only need to know two states, yet how many reboots happen in the world today? This is a very good break down video. Though have to say that Ted nelsons ideas was a big influence on Alans work as well . Great video

[gareginasatryan]

Why do edgy devs hate OOP but love Smalltalk.