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A comment on Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981). Parent comment

Re:Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981) by roeles on Saturday May 21, 2022 @03:35AM (#31456020)
In the words of Christopher Alexander, the programmer is the true inhabiter of the program. Since we can expect the world in which the program should function will change, so should the program.

It is the programmer that has to figure out, often with experiments, what changes to the program work best.

Therefore it makes no sense to me to focus on anything but serving the programmer.

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Re:Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981) by samatman on Saturday May 21, 2022 @07:51AM (#31457084)
The better the experience is for the programmer, the more users will say "y'know what? This doesn't quite do what I want, I wonder how I change that" and presto, they're a programmer now.

We would never have had Hypercard if it weren't for Smalltalk and Alan Kay, and we've never had a platform as good as Hypercard since. That's a crying shame.

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Re:Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981) by igouy on Saturday May 21, 2022 @01:57PM (#31460218)
Who does the programmer "serve" ?
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