On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:38:14 +1200, "Richard O'Keefe"
On Jul 15, 2009, at 5:25 PM, Benjamin L.Russell wrote:
Concepts in Squeak [a dialect and implementation of Smalltalk] have
it interesting that you should use the biological term "disease"; according to a post [1] entitled "Re: Re: Smalltalk Data Structures and Algorithms," by K. K. Subramaniam, dated "Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:25:34 +0530," on the squeak-beginners mailing list (see http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/beginners/2009-June/006270.html) , their origins
in biology rather than in computational math....
That posting is wrong.
Smalltalk's roots are very firmly planted in Lisp, with perhaps a touch of Logo (which also had its roots in Lisp). The classic Smalltalk-76 paper even contains a meta-circular interpreter, which I found reminiscent of the old Lisp one. The "biological" metaphor in Smalltalk is actually a SOCIAL metaphor: sending and receiving messages, and a "social" model of agents with memory exchanging messages naturally leads to anthropomorphisms....
Incidentally, just for the record, in response to my forwarding your claim, Alan Kay, the inventor of Smalltalk, just refuted your refutation [1] (see http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/beginners/2009-July/006331.html); _viz._:
I most definitely still think of OOP at its best as being "biological".
-- Benjamin L. Russell [1] Kay, Alan. "[Newbies] Re: Smalltalk Data Structures and Algorithms." The Beginners Archives. Squeak.org. 24 July 2009. 27 July 2009. http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/beginners/2009-July/006331.html. -- Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 "Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." -- Matsuo Basho^