Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)
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HN comment orderIf you're tired of hearing about the virtues of Smalltalk (like I was at one point) and ask "if it is so good, why isn't it popular?", then watch @deech's talk (Aditya Siram) - "What FP can learn from SmallTalk" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baxtyeFVn3w I think it is the most accessible explanation of the marvel of Smalltalk, for those who were not lucky to work with it during the late 80-90s. Also I think Ruby is the mainstream language that is closest…
"...a language of description (programming language) that serves as an interface between the models in the human mind and those in computing hardware" We do know what the models in our computing hardware look like, but do we actually know the models in the human mind? Don't get me wrong, I love everything about this document. But I can't help but feel like that conceit is really dangerous. And seems common in this era of work.
> Operating System: An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one. I like this one especially. It rings true if you imagine a world where you have complete control over your machine, you don't worry about possibly external code breaking or extracting your stuff and so on. But lets just pretend we don't need to worry about these things for some reason. It would be so powerful. And I don't…
> Natural Selection: Languages and systems that are of sound design will persist, to be supplanted only by better ones. I loved coding in Smalltalk years ago. Guess “better” turned out to be rather subjective...
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