Meanwhile, I finally made it through the "The Early History of Smalltalk" (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/155360.155364).
I must say, Alan Kay is a master of throwing shade. For example, this quote: "Smalltalk-76 was a great improvement on its successors!" 🤔
Also, some neat connections to liberal arts.
I think the most interesting part is the motivation of OO being a way to control/eliminate assignment operations. I'm not sure I've ever seen OO described quite like that before.
This, as opposed to the usual quasi-religious trinity of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.
Kay has a few choice things to say about technical religions as well. For example, noting the manner "in which a way of doing things finally gets canonized into an inflexible belief structure."
In any event, the whole assignment thing is interesting. I'll have to spend more time thinking about that.
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