Paul McGuire wrote:
"Steve Holden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[some stuff]
Good points all. And yes, I recall the BYTE article on Smalltalk. I guess
I was just reacting mostly to the OP's statement that "by '86 the Joy of OOP
was widely known". He didn't say "OOP all began when..." or "OOP was widely
known," which I think still would have been a stretch - he implied that by
'86 OOP was widely recognized as Goodness, to which I disagree. This was
the year of the first OOPSLA conference, but as PyCon people know, just
having a conference doesn't guarantee that a technology is widely and
joyfully accepted. Just as my commercial-centric view may understate
academic interest in some topics, an academic-centric view may overestimate
the impact of topics that are ripe for research, or technically "cool," but
little understood or adopted outside of a university setting.
I would characterize the 80's as the transitional decade from structured
programming (which really started to hit its stride when Djikstra published
"Use of GOTO Considered Harmful") to OOP, and that OOP wasn't really
"joyful" until the early-to-mid 90's.
(And I apologize for characterizing Smalltalk as a "curiosity." I admit my
bias is for software that is widely commercially deployed, and even the most
ardent Smalltalkers will have difficulty citing more than a handful of
applications, compared to C,C++,VB,COBOL,Delphi, etc. I personally have
seen Smalltalk-based factory control and automation systems, but they are
rapidly self-marginalizing, and new customers are extremely reluctant to
enfold Smalltalk into an already patchwork mix of technologies, as is
typically found in factory settings.)
Nothing to disagree with here.
regards
Steve
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