Long time no posting; things are a little hectic. I'm unlikely to get back to posting remotely regularly until later in the Summer, but this news deserves recognition:
Dr. Alan Kay will receive the "Nobel Prize of Computing" in a ceremony in June, as well as $100,000, for his pioneering work on Smalltalk, the first complete dynamic object-oriented programming (OOP) language. Today, the language is credited as the model for C++ … and Java; Kay is considered the first to coin the phrase "object-oriented." [Internet News: Smalltalk Creator Wins 'Nobel Prize' of Computing]
Not before time, I say!
It is unfortunate that while many recognise some of the impacts of Kay's ideas on general computing, still so few really "get it". That applies equally at the human interface, the programming language, and the education levels of Kay's interests.
I hope the transcript of the lecture is available (I hope that Turing Award winners still in fact give a lecture; there is some inspiring stuff in the collected speeches from the first twenty years).
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