

Ask HN: help me find something Alan Kay said - jcoglan

A couple weeks ago there was a link doing the rounds wherein Alan Kay was seen stating that the important thing about Smalltalk was message passing, as opposed to OO in itself. I've been Googling high and low and can't find it again -- does anybody know where it is? Thanks in advance.
======
RiderOfGiraffes
[http://userpage.fu-
berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...](http://userpage.fu-
berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en)

From here : <http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/alanKay+talk>

    
    
        Alan Kay regrets the terminology, object orientated,
        thinking later that message orientated would have
        expressed it better.
    

This seems the most definitive:

[http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-
dev/1998-...](http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-
dev/1998-October/017019.html)

    
    
        Just a gentle reminder that I took some pains at the
        last OOPSLA to try to remind everyone that Smalltalk
        is not only NOT its syntax or the class library, it
        is not even about classes. I'm sorry that I long ago
        coined the term "objects" for this topic because it
        gets many people to focus on the lesser idea.
    
        The big idea is "messaging" -- that is what the kernal
        of Smalltalk/Squeak is all about ...

------
pclark
"OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of
state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in
Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is
possible, but I'm not aware of them"

Source: email [1]

[1] [http://userpage.fu-
berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...](http://userpage.fu-
berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en)

~~~
jcoglan
Not the exact link I was looking for, but useful nonetheless - cheers.

