
What if Smalltalk were invented today? - BigZaphod
http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=209
======
10ren
"ethernet will never work" 1974 memo (also at PARC)
[http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/19740305-xerox-
ethernet-...](http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/19740305-xerox-ethernet-
memo1.jpg)

Interestingly, the criticism turned out to be helpful for Metcalf and Boggs
(inventors), as the memo author relates:
[http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-12847-0.html?forumID=102...](http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-12847-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=226396&messageID=2506029)
More commentary:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20070615164202/http://bytecoder.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070615164202/http://bytecoder.com/2006/09/28/xerox-1974-ethernet-
would-be-a-failure/) <http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/geekend/?p=714>

The memo strikes me as not just frank - but _harsh_. Needlessly so. And yet...
some of its points were accurate, and turned out to be constructive for its
targets. It reminds me of one of my PhD supervisors - an attacking attitude
_and_ insightful and helpful. And of some comments I see on Hackernews...

I don't think that insightful, helpful criticism _needs_ to be harsh. But the
two often seem to do together. Why is that? I don't think I'm imagining the
harshness: I have an objective view because it's not directed at me; and the
authors choose words with negative connotations, instead of neutral ones.
Maybe it's just easier to be honestly critical, if you go on an all-out
attack? (as in an adversarial legal system). Or maybe sweet people won't
criticise in the first place, so it's only the meanies who'll be honest...
brutally. :-)

The old lesson: listen for the grain of truth hidden in harsh criticism.

------
AndrewO
Gotta say, I was a little non-plussed. Then I saw the first comment which put
it in a whole new light:

> Sounds like someone’s getting frustrated with all their paper rejections.
> Don’t lose hope.

Then I understood a little better where this might be coming from and laughed.

------
jeeringmole
[http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/members/bshneiderman/nsd/rejectio...](http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/members/bshneiderman/nsd/rejection_letter.html)

~~~
herdrick
It's always pretty cool to see people overcome brutal rejection. Except...
this structured flowchart thing really did deserve that brutal rejection
letter and if the chart gained respect and prominence then the wrong side won!

I'll concede that the rejection was too nasty for young grad students. But the
idea itself had it coming.

------
Zak
It is probably a mistake to treat language design as computer science, just as
it is a mistake to treat motorcycle design as physics. Languages are tools for
people to use; a language is good if people love it (it is a given that some
people will hate it, and likely that more people will hate it than love it).

------
cookiecaper
I love how reviewer 4 dismisses the paper because Kay did not provide
sufficient flattery.

Additionally, I hate it when people presume that theirs is the One True Way in
something like this; "to do Proper Computer Science one must ...". Such BS.
I'm all for sensible formalization and following rules when they make sense,
but so often these are mechanisms to dismiss unwanted contributions without
having to level any real reasoning, and I almost instantly ignore people who
speak with such hubris in such contexts.

------
jimbokun
"In my opinion, the performance of the language features you propose could
only become competitive after 20 years of further research."

Did this turn out to be true?

~~~
stcredzero
The capabilities became competitive after 15 years of development, but the
marketing decisions of the companies trying to sell the language caused it to
miss the Open Source revolution.

If the syntax were a little more conventional (As in Dave Simmon's
Smallscript) and if perhaps there was a much better Free Software
representative than GNU Smalltalk, then perhaps Perl, Python, and Ruby
wouldn't exist, at least in their current forms.

Java perhaps wouldn't exist. When Sun approached Parcplace in the 80's for a
Virtual Machine for their set-top box project, they weren't treated very
nicely, so they went off and created their own VM.

------
donaq
_Something I learned in academia: there are three kinds of academic reviews:
review by name, review by reference and review by value._

From one of the comments. Joke aside (and it is a good joke), is this true?

