THE VIDEO SHELF · object-oriented programming
Seminar with Alan Kay on Object Oriented Programming (VPRI 0246)
A long recorded seminar in which Alan Kay discusses object-oriented programming, probably from the mid-1980s. He covers the original idea of objects, messaging and the work done at Xerox.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN points to it as primary-source evidence of what Kay meant by objects, which resembled services and message passing rather than modern class-based OOP.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Yoshiki Ohshima (大島芳樹)
- Topic
- object-oriented programming
- Format
- lecture
- Level
- intermediate
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 9
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2017–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Most Alan Kay's presentations I've seen were worth watching. Tons of great ideas in each. They really improved how I reason about systems. There is this famous talk from OOPSLA 1997: [LINK] If you want to see what "practical" OOP looked like in the 80s, …
gambler on Hacker News · 2019-04
In Correctness – A paradigm for sustainable software developmentI think this is a fair assessment. I agree that Smalltalk is by far not a complete solution to the problem of building and maintaining complex system but "only" an attempt. I found that message passing is an elegant approach to have interoperability on a …
patterns on Hacker News · 2023-12
In Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.