I was disappointed that something better than Smalltalk wasn't on the Mac and iPhone (Smalltalk was truly wonderful in the context of the 70s, but we considered it just a step in a good direction). Not understanding…
Simula can't be praised too highly, and it was a huge influence. But if you take the care to check, you will find out that what I termed "Object Oriented" was quite different from Simula in (what I thought were)…
See my comments above. And if you take a look to see what the Alto could really do graphically, and even more so the Dorado, you would not worry about speed. The decisions were for other reasons.
See my comment above, including the last paragraph
What he means is that names are a local convention, and scaling soon obliterates the conventions. Then you need to go to descriptions that use a much smaller set of agreed on things (and you can use the "ambassador"…
Yes, this got very clear in a hurry even in the ARPAnet days, and later at Parc. (This is part of the Licklider "communicating with aliens" problem.) Note that you could do a little of this in Linda, and quite a bit…
In 2004 I wrote a tribute to the research community I grew up in "The Power of the Context" (http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf) and this will possibly help with some of your questions. I was just one of many in…
Bret is a great thinker and designer
When Neil Postman was a grad student he followed Marshall McLuhan around for a few months. One thing he noted was that McLuhan -- when argued with or when asked a question never directly replied, but just came out with…
I'll avoid trying to reply to this. The Roman poet Juvenal quipped "But who will guard the guardians?" referring to one of the main problems of any republic. Plato had one suggested solution, and the US founders had…
You need to have "things that can answer questions". I'd like to get the "right answer" when I ask a machine for someone's date of birth, and similarly I'd like to get the right answer when I ask for their age. It's…
Yes, "collections" and other such things in Smalltalk are "the Christian Scientists with appendicitis". Our implementations were definitely compromises between seeing how to be non-imperative vs already having the…
A clarifying comment here. When one thinks in terms of what I called objects ca 1966, one is talking about entities that from the outside are identical to what we think of as computers (and this means not just sending…
My goals are a lot bigger than Hoppe's (and I fervently hope for something much better than his vision).
Yes, the SICP follows "simulate data" ideas much further back in the past, including the B5000 computer, and especially the OOP systems I did. But the big realization is that there are very few things that are helpful…
I should have mentioned a few other things for the later Smalltalks. First, selectors are just objects. Second, you could use the automatic "message not understood" mechanism to field an unrecognized object. I think I'd…
Clear thoughts and summary!
Take a look at the first implemented Smalltalk (-72). It implemented objects internally as a "receive the message" mechanism -- a kind of quick parser -- and didn't have dedicated selectors. (You can find "The Early…
Yes re: FPGAs -- they are definitely the modern placeholder of microcode (and better because you can organize how the computation and state are hooked together). The old culprit -- Intel -- is now offering hybrid chips…
Actually ... only the first version of Smalltalk was done in terms of the NOVA (and not using BCPL). The subsequent versions (Smalltalk-76 on) were done by making a custom virtual machine in the Alto's microcode that…
> The more interesting/optimized ways to map this would be where a single object in the software internet somehow maps to multiple computers ... Yes, this is the essence of Dave Reed's 1978 MIT thesis on the design of a…
I think more needs to be done to understand why some really hard things to do -- like hitting a baseball, shooting 3 pointers, etc. -- are not considered elitist, and have literally millions of children spending many…
Closer to home -- for example in the US public educational system -- we have prime examples of your (and Easterly's) point about "band-aids" vs. "health". After acknowledging how politics works, I think we can see other…
Actually, just what could be done 40 years ago. Much more can be (and should be) done today. That's the biggest point.
It's not about "deserve" but about what people "need" to be part of a civilization and help sustain and grow it. We tend to lose sight of what is not happening right in front of us and take the larger surround as a…
I was disappointed that something better than Smalltalk wasn't on the Mac and iPhone (Smalltalk was truly wonderful in the context of the 70s, but we considered it just a step in a good direction). Not understanding…
Simula can't be praised too highly, and it was a huge influence. But if you take the care to check, you will find out that what I termed "Object Oriented" was quite different from Simula in (what I thought were)…
See my comments above. And if you take a look to see what the Alto could really do graphically, and even more so the Dorado, you would not worry about speed. The decisions were for other reasons.
See my comment above, including the last paragraph
What he means is that names are a local convention, and scaling soon obliterates the conventions. Then you need to go to descriptions that use a much smaller set of agreed on things (and you can use the "ambassador"…
Yes, this got very clear in a hurry even in the ARPAnet days, and later at Parc. (This is part of the Licklider "communicating with aliens" problem.) Note that you could do a little of this in Linda, and quite a bit…
In 2004 I wrote a tribute to the research community I grew up in "The Power of the Context" (http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf) and this will possibly help with some of your questions. I was just one of many in…
Bret is a great thinker and designer
When Neil Postman was a grad student he followed Marshall McLuhan around for a few months. One thing he noted was that McLuhan -- when argued with or when asked a question never directly replied, but just came out with…
I'll avoid trying to reply to this. The Roman poet Juvenal quipped "But who will guard the guardians?" referring to one of the main problems of any republic. Plato had one suggested solution, and the US founders had…
You need to have "things that can answer questions". I'd like to get the "right answer" when I ask a machine for someone's date of birth, and similarly I'd like to get the right answer when I ask for their age. It's…
Yes, "collections" and other such things in Smalltalk are "the Christian Scientists with appendicitis". Our implementations were definitely compromises between seeing how to be non-imperative vs already having the…
A clarifying comment here. When one thinks in terms of what I called objects ca 1966, one is talking about entities that from the outside are identical to what we think of as computers (and this means not just sending…
My goals are a lot bigger than Hoppe's (and I fervently hope for something much better than his vision).
Yes, the SICP follows "simulate data" ideas much further back in the past, including the B5000 computer, and especially the OOP systems I did. But the big realization is that there are very few things that are helpful…
I should have mentioned a few other things for the later Smalltalks. First, selectors are just objects. Second, you could use the automatic "message not understood" mechanism to field an unrecognized object. I think I'd…
Clear thoughts and summary!
Take a look at the first implemented Smalltalk (-72). It implemented objects internally as a "receive the message" mechanism -- a kind of quick parser -- and didn't have dedicated selectors. (You can find "The Early…
Yes re: FPGAs -- they are definitely the modern placeholder of microcode (and better because you can organize how the computation and state are hooked together). The old culprit -- Intel -- is now offering hybrid chips…
Actually ... only the first version of Smalltalk was done in terms of the NOVA (and not using BCPL). The subsequent versions (Smalltalk-76 on) were done by making a custom virtual machine in the Alto's microcode that…
> The more interesting/optimized ways to map this would be where a single object in the software internet somehow maps to multiple computers ... Yes, this is the essence of Dave Reed's 1978 MIT thesis on the design of a…
I think more needs to be done to understand why some really hard things to do -- like hitting a baseball, shooting 3 pointers, etc. -- are not considered elitist, and have literally millions of children spending many…
Closer to home -- for example in the US public educational system -- we have prime examples of your (and Easterly's) point about "band-aids" vs. "health". After acknowledging how politics works, I think we can see other…
Actually, just what could be done 40 years ago. Much more can be (and should be) done today. That's the biggest point.
It's not about "deserve" but about what people "need" to be part of a civilization and help sustain and grow it. We tend to lose sight of what is not happening right in front of us and take the larger surround as a…