Alan Kay at OOPSLA 1997 - The computer revolution hasnt happened yet

What people said

gambler · 2019-04 · Strong recommendation

Most Alan Kay's presentations I've seen were worth watching. Tons of great ideas in each. They really improved how I reason about systems. There is this famous talk from OOPSLA 1997: [VIDEO] If you want to see what "practical" OOP looked like in the 80s, this is a good video: [LINK]

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jgon · 2014-01 · Strong recommendation

You should check out Alan Kay's OOPSLA keynote "The Compute Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet" at [VIDEO] specifically about 20 mintues in where he says that a browser should be exactly what you say here. On the one hand, he was talking about this almost 20 years ago, on the other hand you're in good company because he's a pretty smart guy! I encourage all developers to watch that talk and do some thinking about the current state of our practice and where we want to go from here.

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mpweiher · 2024-03 · Recommendation

The Computer Revolution hasn't happened yet , OOPSLA 1997 keynote [VIDEO] Others have already mentioned The Early History of Smalltalk , highly recommended. You'll probably want to read it a couple of times, revisit from time to time. The big idea is messaging, or rather "ma" [LINK] "The key in making great and growable systems is much more to design how its modules communicate rather than what their internal properties and behaviors should be." "I think I recall also pointing out that it is vitally important not just to have a complete metasystem, but to have fences that help guard the crossing of metaboundaries." " I would say that a system that allowed other metathings to be done in the ordinary course of programming (like changing what inheritance means, or what is an instance) is a bad design. (I believe that systems should allow these things, but the design should be such that there are clear fences that have to be crossed when serious extensions are made.)" "I would suggest that more progress could be made if the smart and talented Squeak list would think more about what the next step in metaprogramming should be -- how can we get great power, parsimony, AND security of meaning?"

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