Influences
John Shoch, a member of the LRG at PARC, acknowledged in his 1979 paper Smalltalk's debt to Plato's theory of forms in which an ideal archetype becomes the template from which other objects are derived.
Smalltalk has influenced the wider world of computer programming in four main areas. It inspired the syntax and semantics of other computer programming languages. Secondly, it was a prototype for a model of computation known as message passing. Thirdly, its WIMP GUI inspired the windowing environments of personal computers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, so much so that the windows of the first Macintosh desktop look almost identical to the MVC windows of Smalltalk-80. Finally, the integrated development environment was the model for a generation of visual programming tools that look like Smalltalk's code browsers and debuggers.
Python and Ruby have reimplemented some Smalltalk ideas in an environment similar to that of AWK or Perl. The Smalltalk "metamodel" also serves as the inspiration for the object model design of Perl 6.
The syntax and runtime behaviour of the Objective-C programming language is strongly influenced by Smalltalk.
There is also a modular Smalltalk-like implementation designed for scripting called S#, or Script.NET. S# uses just-in-time compilation technology and supports an extended Smalltalk-like language written by David Simmons of Smallscript Corp.
Several programming languages like Self, ECMAScript/JavaScript, and Newspeak have taken the ideas of Smalltalk in new directions.
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Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“Do not seek anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)