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. The other classic OO language, which inspired C++, which inspired Java, which inspired C#, is Simula 67, which has its roots in Algol 60. While Simula 67 was sometimes used for simulating biological processes, the main background was discrete event systems like factories and shops; there are no biological metaphors in Simula.