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James Gosling - Simula: a personal journey

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  • Recommended by 2 people: 1 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2018 to 2022.
  • Presented by James Gosling, creator of Java

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

4.9K views9 years ago2 recommendations

Programming languagesHistory and cultureLanguage design and type systemsHistory of computingObject-oriented design

James Gosling shares how Simula's object model and coroutines shaped his thinking and directly influenced the design of Java.

From the Seminar celebrating the 50 years of Simula: I started using Simula in 1974 (1975?). I even did some bug fixing on the copy of the compiler that we had. It totally transformed the way I thought about software. I did use it for simulation, but I used it in other ways as well. When Smalltalk and C++ came around, neither felt to me like they measured up to Simula. And Simula had a primitive multi-threading model (via co-routines) that was ahead of its time. When it became my turn, and I was working on Java, Simula was very much on my mind.

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a primary source on how Simula 67's object model directly influenced Java.

Moments people linked to

seumarson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Christopher Alexander has died”

…ct references and attributes, object dot notation, polymorphism, etc. So Kay's take on Simula being this strange language he had to "make sense of" for his work on Smalltalk, or even the fact he claims he coined the term "object-oriented" is total BS. Here's a more nuanced and impartial account of Simula by James Gosling, if you want to know more: link to this video .…
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inactive-useron Lobsters • Recommends

Simula: a personal journey (2017)
2View on Lobsters

u/suhcoRin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “An opinionated history of programming languages”

Self has not much in common with Smalltalk-80. Especially the prototype concept which is essential for JS has nothing to do with ST. Even if there were closures in ST and Self Eich claims that he used the concept from Scheme. EDIT: concerning Simula and Java this lecture/statements might interest you: link to this video
10View on Reddit

Rochuson Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Early History of Smalltalk (1993)”

> Smalltalk had always been a primarily academic language There was quite a hype in the nineties with many enterprise applications based on Smalltalk; my first contact with Smalltalk was in a commercial, not an academic setting; most of it blew away when cheap, fast (HotSpot) Java became available. > Ruby, Python, Java, C#, etc, all owe a great deal to Smalltalk. That's a bit too optimistic. E.g. Python is not a descentent of Smalltalk (see e.g. link ), neither is Java (see e.g. link to this video ). C# is also rather a brain child of Java and C++ than of Smalltalk.
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Rochuson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Simula the Forgotten Programming Language”

> it is the progenitor of the most popular, and reviled program paradigm, Object Oriented Programming. Designed by Ole-Johan Dahl, and Kristen Nygaard in 1962 at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo What the author writes in the first sentence only applies to Simula 67, which indeed was the first general purpose object-oriented programming language; Simula I instead was quite different, not yet object-oriented, and dedicated to simulation. > Then, in 1991 another language would enter the playing field, Java, and the rest is history. Java actually used the object model of Simula 67; James Gosling gave a talk about it at the 50th anniversary in Oslo. Here is the link: link to this video
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gpderettaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Object-oriented Programming with ANSI-C (1993) [pdf]”

I'm sure that Objective-C and Smalltalk have also been strong influences, especially in the libraries. But I would say that the OO semantics are very Simula like. Can you really claim as Smalltalk inspired a language without an easy to use DoesNotUderstand? That's pretty much the basis for first class messages and transparent delegation. Also: link to this video
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Rochuson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Simula the Forgotten Programming Language”

> ...progenitor of the most popular, and reviled program paradigm, Object Oriented Programming. Designed by Ole-Johan Dahl, and Kristen Nygaard in 1962... In 1962 the first version of Simula appeared which was quite different from Simula 67, not yet object-oriented, and dedicated to simulation. Simula 67 was the first general purpose object-oriented programming language. > Then, in 1991 another language would enter the playing field, Java, and the rest is history. Java actually used the object model of Simula 67; James Gosling gave a talk about it at the 50th anniversary in Oslo. Here is the link: link to this video
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Rochuson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Niklaus Wirth, or the Importance of Being Simple”

…ce, which unfortunately shares the name with the language, but is not the same thing. The user interface of the Oberon system again looks like a stripped down version of the Cedar environment developed at PARC (where Wirth had his sabbatical). The object model of Java directly traces back to Simula 67, not to Smalltalk or its descendants (see e.g. link to this video ).…
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Rochuson Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Java Story, the Official Documentary”

Interesting documentary; nice to see all the people involved; Simula is not mentioned in the documentary, though in an earlier lecture, Gosling was very specific that Java implemented the object model of Simula 67, which he had used before (see link to this video ).
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