[Jtsummers]

And we absolutely needed 30-45 minutes to learn that that wasn't why it was created. The first part is a history of OOP languages to debunk something I'd never heard even claimed until I watched this video. The history was interesting, but also wrong in a few places. It was amusing to hear him talk about Arpanet being used in the 90s, though.

[nickitolas]

> but also wrong in a few places

Would you be so kind as to elaborate how/where? (Other than the "arpanet in the 90s")

[Jtsummers]

If I get bored with life I'll rewatch and take notes, that was the main one that made me chuckle and stuck with me. It was details around Lisp and a couple other things that were outside his explicit research scope (he specifically researched C++, Smalltalk, and Simula per his blog). Like claiming that everything in Lisp was based on lists (even in 1960 that wasn't true).

I'd just expect more from someone who takes 30+ minutes to debunk a claim that doesn't matter and most people have never heard to be more particular in getting details correct.

On the first part of the video, to be more constructive, it does not matter why a language or tool or whatever was made. The claim, that he debunks, is that OO languages were made to be good for working with teams. Whether it was made for that is immaterial, and no one needs 30 minutes of mostly historically correct video to get to The Truth(tm) of the matter. What's more interesting, and he never bothered to get into, is whether OO is actually good for working with teams (I can go either way, I've dealt with enough garbage OO programs to know that OO itself does not help things, but enough good OO programs to know that it can help things).

To anyone who has not yet watched the video, the second half is interesting, the first half is mostly a waste of time.

[adamrezich]

I dunno man even just learning that Bjarne thought Simula's classes were cool specifically because of the domain of what he was working on—and learning that he ran into the same “unity build” problem that anyone who's worked on a large C++ project has encountered, years before literally anyone else in the world had—was fascinating, something I'd never heard before, and very interesting context in the broader scope of “OOP.”

[vouwfietsman]

> Whether it was made for that is immaterial

This is in the talk, he explicitly says that its often brought up that "OOP is made for large teams" "you're not using it as intended" "its not made to model your domain hierarchy" etc etc. The first 30 minutes is his reaction to that, disproving it.

Whether thats true or interesting is a different question, but its explicitly stated in the video, at the start, before he goes into the history.

[igouy]

> "OOP is made for large teams" "you're not using it as intended" "its not made to model your domain hierarchy"

Are there actual references for those quotes? Were they said by some kind-of expert or by a sales person or by cousin John?

Are they strawmen set-up to knock-down.

[bevyenjoyer]

I highlighted "OOP is made for large teams", right clicked, clicked "Search Google for ..." and found the answer almost immediately. Give it a shot!

[igouy]

1) 'AI Overview "No, it's not strictly true that Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is exclusively made for large teams, but it does offer significant advantages in such environments."'

2) 'Casey Muratori -- The Big OOPs: Anatomy of a Thirty-five'

Still no reliable reference.

[Greduan]

Oh if only you watched the presentation, where he quotes Bjarne Stroustrup and Alan Kay xD

[igouy]

Here's one of the Alan Kay quotes —

"Unfortunately, inheritance — though an incredibly powerful technique — has turned out to be very difficult for novices (and even professionals) to deal with." Alan Kay, The Early History of Smalltalk, page 82

That's taken from a section which reflects on introducing programming to children in the summer of '73 —

In part, what we were seeing was the "hacker phenomenon", that for any given pursuit, a particular 5% of the population will jump into it naturally, while the 80% or so who can learn it in time do not find it natural.

… it is likely that this area is more like writing than we wanted it to be. Namely, for the "80%", it really has to be learned gradually over a period of years in order to build up the structures that need to be there for design and solution look-ahead.

    -

Here's how that Alan Kay quote is used in The Big OOPs —

13:47 -- It's because 10 years earlier, he was already saying he kind of soured on it. He's like, inheritance was like really powerful, but people just didn't know how to use it. Novices and experts apparently both couldn't use it, right. It was just uh you know, it's really good, but no one can figure out how to use it, I guess. Uh so that's a little bit weird.

   -

Not "kind-of-soured on it" one page later —

There were a variety of strong desires for a real inheritance mechanism from Adele and me, from Larry Tesler, who was working on desktop publishing, and from the grad students. page 83

   -

Not "kind-of-soured on it" but wanting a "comprehensive and clean multiple inheritance scheme" —

A word about inheritance. … By the time Smalltalk-76 came along, Dan Ingalls had come up with a scheme that was Simula-like in it's semantics but could be incrementally changed on the fly to be in accord with our goals of close interaction. I was not completely thrilled with it because it seemed that we needed a better theory about inheritance entirely (and still do). … But no comprehensive and clean multiple inheritance scheme appeared that was compelling enough to surmount Dan's original Simula-like design. page 84

[igouy]

Oh if only you watched you could share.

[db48x]

Seriously? Just open any trade rag from the last 40 or 50 years.

[igouy]

So it was a sales pitch? And we would have blindly believed the sales pitch because …?

(I asked for actual references for those quotes so we don't waste time with moving goal posts.)