Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: activis@netcom.com (ActiVision)
Subject: Re: origin of the name Smalltalk
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Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 01:51:25 GMT
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Carl E Gundel (carlg@world.std.com) wrote:
: The Unknown Ranger (an397723@anon.penet.fi) wrote:

: : .
: : What is the origin of the name Smalltalk?

: Alan...  Adele...  Anybody?    ;-)

: Seriously though, I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that the 
: name Smalltalk reflects a design goal (among many) to be able to 
: accomplish a lot with very little code.

Partially true, from what I understand.

The goal was alleged to be twofold: first, Alan Kay was trying to create a
language that children could use profitably, so there's a "it's just Smalltalk"
bent to the name, to make it sound simple.

Another reason was that it was becoming increasingly common among high-powered
research organizations, especially in those days, to come up with really
grandiose claims and really grandiose names for your projects, and Kay
allegedly wanted to counter that trend by giving his language project such a
humble name--that is, he wanted to underpromise and overdeliver.

: Carl
: -- 
: ------------------------------------------------------------------
: Carl Gundel  carlg@world.std.com  Shoptalk Systems  508-872-5315
: author of Liberty BASIC,  "EASY Windows and OS/2 programming!"
: http://world.std.com/~carlg/basic.html

Paul Snively
psnively@activision.com
