đź“–Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

authors
Daniel H. H. Ingalls
year
1981
  • q

    The purpose of the Smalltalk project is to provide computer support for the creative spirit in everyone.

  • q

    Personal Mastery: If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual.

  • To be Object-Oriented, the system must provide automatic storage management.

    • That mostly referred to memory-management, but I believe it can be easily extended to any storage (i.e., applications shouldn’t deal with files)

  • q

    Operating System: An operating system is a collection of things that don’t fit into a language. There shouldn’t be one.

  • q

    Natural Selection: Languages and systems that are of sound design will persist, to be supplanted only by better ones.

    (This one is funny because Smalltalk is almost extinct (and it wasn’t replaced by a better system). This proves Rise of Worse is Better)

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