@exchgr sure, but looking at Sketchpad and knowing Alan Kay's relationship to it, perhaps we can at least understand his rationale at the time?

IMHO, many in the field never understood object-oriented paradigms well at all. I only postulate that perhaps if they were more familiar with its backstory they might have a better comprehension of its etymology if nothing else.

There are similar paradigms, from other fields, e.g. recursion in mathematics and Linguistics (which sure, exists in programming too, but how many people talk about "recursive oriented programming"?)

@MyLittleMetroid The back story behind SmallTalk is fascinating too. I'm not at a laptop to dig it up presently, but it was done almost as a dare.

My crude summary: SmallTalk was created essentially to prove a point that a powerful program could be implemented in approximately a page of code.

Albeit, it grew from that original proof of concept.

If you ever have an opportunity to visit DynamicLand in Oakland, it embodies a similar ethos. No surprise, Alan Kay was one of the individuals behind that research project.

They have a section where the operating code is all printed out on a board and the core kernel again: is basically just a page of code.

Albeit, the underlying complexity (implemented atop Lua, which is atop a bunch of other stuff) is obfuscated in that presentation, but: it's a welcome obfuscation. It allows the users to keep things simple and powerful and intuitive and elegant. It's a fascinating brainstorming work shop. Essentially making prototyping powerfully interactive systems as superficially simplistic as child's play in a preschool.

After visiting it, from my vantage at least: it became painfully clear both how far ahead visionaries such as Alan Kay and his collaborators are, and how far behind almost everything else in the field remains.

@exchgr