I want to take a bit of a look back at the mid 1980s… 20 years ago

In the mid 80s I was working as a programmer, using languages like Assembly, C, Pascal, and Fortran. And I was learning OO by studying Smalltalk. OO was hot & new.. and hardly anyone knew it.

Apple was riding high. The Macintosh was just out: the 128K and 512K versions. And I lusted after one. The Mac Plus came out in ’86.

Fast forward to now… 20 years later, as I said.

Apple is well underway to regaining it’s former glory. The Mac is doing well, quite smoothly undergoing it’s second architectural refactoring. And I very happily have a houseful of macs of various vintages, dating from an SE FDHD through to a Aluminum Powerbook G4.

I still work as a programmer, but more often I work *with* programmers to help them improve there skills & practices.

Now what languages are in use? Well, there’s still C around, but C++ seems to have largely replaced it. Java is the king of the hill. What’s Java? Oh, it’s like a cleaned up C++ with seatbelts & airbags. The new kid on the block is C#, which is a not so nicely cleaned up C++ with seatbelts & airbags. Ruby is taking much of the industry by storm… re-raising the banner of dynamic languages.

And there’s Smalltalk… modern, sophisticated, and up to date compared with it’s predecessor of 20 years ago… but basically the same. You know what they say: quality endures. OO is still hot, not so new, but still hardly anyone really knows it. What do I tell people who want to learn what OO really is? I tell them to learn Smalltalk.