A (textual) Interview With Ted Kaehler - Smalltalk, HyperCard, etc

Histories
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The following is an interview conducted via email with Ted Kaehler, who was in the unique position to have worked extensively both on Smalltalk and HyperCard. Ted, thank you for sharing this valuable history. The interview was conducted September 2021.

Ted’s experience:

  • Worked on Smalltalk 72, 74, 76, 78, and 80 at Xerox PARC.
  • Worked on HyperCard and Squeak at Apple.
  • Worked on Squeak and Etoys at Disney Imagineering.
  • Continued work on Squeak at ViewPoints Research, Hewlett-Packard Research, SAP, and Y-Combinator’s HARC.

By Josh Justice at User-Modifiable Software (“Examining Smalltalk and HyperCard as systems that empower users to modify their software.”)

Here’s a snippet from the (short) interview:

There is a famous email from a user about the greatness of the “24-hour Smalltalk Support Desk.” There is no such thing of course, but this user realized that everything about the system is visible and changable. At 3 am he realized he needed to change the process scheduler. He read enough code to find the right method, changed it, and continued with his project.

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I remember being quite impressed with I first saw HyperCard on an Apple Mac, and having already written a sort of Teletext/Prestel thing for BBC Micros set about adding in some more features like selectable “links” and the ability to fill-out “forms” and have them saved back to the stack… (rather than use a separate page editor).

Sadly one of many things that got lost in a house move (and subsequent burglary) a couple of years later. Ah well!

Cheers,

-Gordon

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