Re:Byte Magazine Special Issue: Smalltalk (1984)
by ncmncm on Friday August 12, 2022 @11:37PM
(#32446670)
My recollection is that Star came along rather later. Certainly Alan Kay would have wanted to implement Star in Smalltalk.
According to the Arbiter of All Things, the demo was in 1978, and Star came out in 1981.
Re:Byte Magazine Special Issue: Smalltalk (1984)
by AlbertCory on Sunday August 14, 2022 @03:41PM
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Alan Kay wasn't involved in Star, except as a PARC influencer.
Sorry, I have to correct you on that. Or rather, clarify the proper construction of it, which is: narrow.
In https://www.albertcory.io/inventing-the-future, I talk about Smalltalk a lot. It was not used for the Xerox Star, and there was only a limited demo of the UI done in Smalltalk. No one seriously considered building Star on it.
However, you're right in that the PARC demo to Jobs did make heavy use of Smalltalk. That's because the demo was done by PARC and not by the Star developers, and they showed him the ideas that inspired Star, ideas that had existed for years before he came.