metamerist

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Alan Kay, OOPSLA 1997

The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet.

A good talk by Alan Kay at OOPSLA 1997.



37:30

"A lot of our confusion with objects is the problem that in our Western Culture we have a language that has very hard nouns and hard verbs. Our process words stink. I have apologized profusely over the last 20 years for making up the word object-oriented because as soon as it started to be misapplied, I realized I should have used a much more process-oriented word for it."

"Japanese have a word 'ma' ... and 'ma' is the stuff in between what we call objects; it's the stuff we don't see because we're focused on the nounness of things rather than the processness of things whereas Japanese has a more process oriented way. You can always tell that by looking at the size of a word it takes to express something important. So 'ma' is very short. We have to use words like 'interstitial' orworse to express what the Japanese are talking about."

Google video link

(ht: Lambda the Ultimate)

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