From: "Jörg W Mittag" <JoergWMittag+Ruby@...>
Date: 2011-06-07T21:35:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Object-Oriented thinking

David Masover wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 25, 2011 01:02:36 AM Chad Perrin wrote:
>> I think your description of the object model and how you think of it is
>> excellent, and it very closely approaches the way I think about it,
>> though I think some of the points you make come off a bit more subtly
>> than they would if I tried to explain it.
> Thank you!
> 
> I actually should give credit to... someone. I'm sure these ideas aren't 
> entirely my own, but I don't remember where they come from.

That would be none other than Alan Kay himself.

Well, actually, he described objects as their own little independent
*computers*, not *programs* as you did, but the rest of your
description is pretty close. (I guess that would make the *methods*
the programs.)

I'm not entirely sure what the *exact* connection is (maybe Alan Kay
interned at ARPA?) but Alan Kay *knew* about the architecture of the
ARPAnet (what we would now call the Internet and specifically the idea
of messaging as implemented in TCP/IP) when he started to think about
object-orientation.

He thought that independent machines communicating over the network by
messaging, with no shared memory, was a *brilliant* way to design
complex distributed communication systems, and if it's good enough to
design a worldwide information system, it surely would be good enough
to design programs, right?

This is the way that pretty much all of his team thought about (and
still does, if you listen e.g. to recent interviews with Dan Ingalls)
object-orientation. Another view that is more peculiar to Alan Kay
himself, is thinking of objects as biological cells. (This is his
biology minor showing through.)

jwm