knudsen (12/10/82)
Following all this Small-talk, I can't help a minor flame about Xerox-PARC. When I was a grad sutdent at CMU, around '72 Alan Kay of PARC visited campus to lecture on his visions of future personal computing. Some of his predicitons were right on, some are still coming, and some missed. Hardware-wise, he predicted a portable very much like an Epson HX20, complete with LCD video screen only full sized. It used 3M tape cartridges. He had great ideas about raster-scan graphics. He mentioned Smalltalk, and some of our students who worked suumers at PARC also raved about it. That was the last anyone heard of it. They had it running (?) on a small workstation micro called the ALTO. Anyway, my impression then was that Smalltalk would run on a small machine, so I wander at the stmt that it won't even run on a VAX. Hell, why not a C-64? FLAME ON -- Why did Xerox sit on this thing for 10 years? Were they tring to save it from the fate of XDS (nee SDS) computers? Bet the real reason why people on net are saying that Smalltalk is no great thing is that, during those 10 years of Rip van Winkle mode, the rest of Comp Sci (not just academia, but even Intel?) at least caught up with Smalltalk, and perhaps have left it in the same place as goto-less programming and roller skating? Seems if Xerox had agressively marketed the thing (to say nothing of the ALTO), maybe Smalltalk could have influenced the computing field, or at least survived in some mutated form. Perhaps they realized that only PhD's could appreciate it, let alone program in it? All we have is rumors as to what it looks like. Anyway, from what I hear here about the language, its concepts, and the gold-plated (literally) hardware needed to run it, we needn't worry ourselves much. Alan Kay has since gone to a true personal computer company with real influence (and very good graphics), Atari. Xerox has finally improved their copiers to where they're almost as good as the competition. And lots of people are glad that Bell Labs didn't try to hide UN*X for 10 years -- in that time, even it may be obsolete (what?!?) Having a CS PhD, I do appreciate the object-oriented discussions-- and I susptect that S-t- DOES make this style of programming easier and more natural (flame off) --mike k