Embed Notice

Still, for all that, there’s a part of SmallTalk — maybe the most important part — that’s kind of lost to time. Part of the original vision was to make every computer something that •the user of the computer could reshape•. Thus SmallTalk’s bizarre-to-us world where there’s no distinction between programming environment and runtime environment: every window on the screen is an object you can modify; every behavior of the system is open to tinkering; every part of the system you’re using a thing you can change.

That vision of the computer as moldable clay looks pretty distant at this point.

4/