Smalltalk

tags : Programming Languages, Human Computer Interaction ( HCI )

> The purpose of the Smalltalk project is to provide computer support for the creative spirit in everyone. [...] If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual.

History §

• The market for Smalltalk machines peaked in the 1980s. The language itself was most influential in what it inspired and invented. In addition to the Apple Lisa, the Xerox Alto also inspired Carnegie Melon University professor Raj Reddy to coin the term “3M computer” (“a Megabyte of memory, a Megapixel display, and a Million instructions per second — for less than a Megapenny, or $10K), which indirectly created the workstation market we talked about earlier19. The language itself inspired integrated development environments, debuggers, and entire windowing system features we take for granted today. The pedagogy Smalltalk developed for classrooms20 would go on to inspire one of the students in that classroom to invent HyperCard

• So why didn’t Smalltalk take over the world?

  With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that from the pointy-headed boss perspective, the Smalltalk value proposition was: Pay a lot of money to be locked in to slow software that exposes your IP, looks weird on screen and cannot interact well with anything else; it is much easier to maintain and develop though! On top of that, a fair amount of bad luck. Gilad Bracha, “Bits of History, Words of Advice”16