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HP Fires Father of OOP
An anonymous reader writes "Wow. Hewlett-Packard has disbanded its Advanced Software Research team and sent its leader, reknowned programmer Alan Kay, packing. From today's Good Morning Silicon Valley: 'HP is bidding adieu to legendary Silicon Valley technologist Alan Kay. A founder of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, Kay -- who once said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" -- was instrumental in the development of the windowing GUI and modern object-oriented programming. He envisioned a laptop computer long before the first ones rolled out and his Smalltalk programming language was a predecessor to Sun Microsystems' Java. Hard to believe HP's cutting him loose.' Maybe Apple will hire him."
the HP bio on Alan Kay
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
...is the antithesis of the Java B&D philosophy. It's an aggressively dynamically typed language, and is much more of a precursor to Python or Ruby than Java.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
That is why the Squeak license still mentions Apple
There are some excellent videos on archive.org of Alan Kay explaining some of the early GUI projects (including Xerox and the early laptop "prototype") http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987_2
Check out some of his presentations of open croquet before you say that (see e.g. here). He is bringing the kind of OpenGL graphics that gamers have got used to into the mainstream GUI. It is among the most innovative and forward-looking interface development I've seen. Do we really think we'll be dragging windows around a 2D desktop in 30 years time?
I had a close friend who worked for HP about a year ago. He was shocked at how inefficient everything was run, and how they participated in a lot of unprofitable (and wasteful) activities. His biggest comment was that their slogan should be "HP Rebrand", since that's all they do. There hasn't been any significant advancements or innovations made, nor any large pushes to making useful discoveries.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Layoff 15,000 Employees, shut down user group, now firing key persons in R&D.....even the dumbest employee could tell what's in their CEO Carly's mind - cutting as much cost as possible, create a artificial short-term profit hype, so that she can retreat with huge severance package for her 'accomplishment'; but what'd that leave HP? A living hell of disolation, without any competitive edge to continue their business as usual.
How could the board approve of her action which is obviously doing nothing more than achieving her own personal goal while damaging the company as a whole? Unless, of course, the major investors who back Carly approve of this. I cannot tell for sure, but that's very possible - the major investors believe that HP is doomed.
i can understand that it's really too trivial to have mentioned in his Bio intro, but Alan Kay also won some minor award recently -- think it's called the TURING AWARD. i can't imagine why anyone would want to employ such a slacker. http://internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/33425 11/
-craig
Yep - HP has really lost it. Having just gone through an RFP process for an enterprise SAN, we looked at HP since most of our servers were HP. What a disappointing offering! Nothing innovative at all. IBM, NetApp, and EMC blew them away.
HP's downfall started to happen as soon as they started selling tons of LaserJet printers.
Laserjets, I deal with them almost every day. When there is not a bank branch install or some state/county/city project; there is always a printer that needs to be fixed. I still see the old ones cranking out nice crisp pages. The main downfall to a laserjet, or any printer, is the end user. Paper jam? Maybe this letter opener will fix it! Or, is coffee bad for a printer? Before someone flames the hell out of me I'll continue with this...UPS and FedEx (or anyone in shipping) also do their fair share of making sure you get a guaranteed lemon. As far as inkjets go...I have not seen one that I like. I have noticed, however, with all printers; the more they look like a box the better they work. All of that curvy crap tends to suck. Xerox Phasers kick much butt. They are however a real pain to fix and they run really hot!
HP seemed to take a little break and brought nothing new to market. Instead of making great new products, they kept on milking the same printer lines until they got old, crusty, and expensive to operate.
HP makes really decent servers and networking equipment. Yeah, yeah, they are second to Cisco as far as networking equipment. We'll see how that plays out in ten years.
I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
Your story "HP FIres Father of OOP" is the tip of the iceburg. In the link from that article, it claims that the Cambridge Research Lab is also closing. This Lab was not just into Health and Wellness, but supported the open source community. Take a look at their people section:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/crl/
Jim Gettys the author of the X Windows System.
Keith Packard the founder of FreeDesktop.
All the founders and supporters of handhelds.org.
The open source community is going to be hit hard by this one. These are people that will be missed.
The Cambridge Research Lab was the last living ember of Digital Equipment Corps Lab. These are the folks that created alta vista, speechbot.com, jukebox (ipod), etc...
Check out the old DEC website and compare the projects:
http://www.crl.hpl.hp.com/
The difference in the spirit of the web sites says it all. The HP site looks cold and dead. The DEC site is alive.
Silicon Graphics. Their support is best, and their stuff works. Say what you want about the OS, it CAN be secured and has given me the least trouble out of any vendor. Shame everyone thinks they're going under and ignore them.
We had a printout posted in side isles and so on that took the corporate logo and placed "integrate" under it. An apt description. I knew months ago that Hurd was talking about cutting a lot of "unnecessary" research. In imaging and printing, we were pretty insulated from most of the turmoil during and after the Compaq merger. However, even we were ultimately not immune as consumable revenue decreased, the core laser business matured, and "underperforming" businesses (that is, something not #1 or #2 in its market) sucked money from growth areas. Another problem was some management with no long-term vision: "Yes! let's invest here. . . no, wait! That costs more money than we thought!" Planning and commitment were lacking before the so-called transformation, and maybe still are. So, how are you supposed to get to even #2? That and the incredibly stupid idea of combining printing and PCs. Vyomesh Joshi is actually a good leader who shoots strait and doesn't dance around hard questions; the imaging and printing organization as a separate company would do quite well. At least Carly was booted. Hurd is doing what he has to, and it's not easy (not that it makes it any nicer for those that are getting the axe). I think there will be plenty of post layoff survivor syndrome there for a while.
I'm sorry, I sound bitter. I'm not though, HP was fairly sensitive and generous to those of us that chose to leave on our own accord. I'm glad I did. There's just sadly nothing about HP anymore that makes it better to work for than anywhere else, and there once was. It has become, even at the printing level, an integrator of other technologies rather than a source. Thus the dissolution of this and other research groups will continue. Hurd wants to bring R&D "closer to the customer." I also doubt that severance packages will ever be that generous again. I found a good job in a completely different industry, and I wish HP the best of luck. Wow, that was therapeutic.
By the way, if you have not read it, check out the article that pissed off VJ. I don't know how they did it, but Business Week nailed it almost 100%.
Wasn't OO invented in northern europe the mid 60's in the Simula language by a guy named something like Nygaard?
Table-ized A.I.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For some interesting anecdotes involving Alan
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Jim Gettys (the X Window System guy) also got the boot from HP. It is mentioned here.
Proably wont win any karma for saying this but what exactly has Alan Kay done in like the last 20 years.
Squeak http://www.squeak.org/
Croquet http://opencroquet.org/
eToys http://squeakland.org/
It certainly isn't about saving bandwidth--it is about forcing some people with basic, easily fixable problems to buy a new printer.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I thought the fathers of OOP were Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard.
They created the first OOP language, after all...
Smalltalk failed, essentially, because the companies providing Smalltalk tools in the early commercialization window decided that it was a _premium_ technology and that they should therefore charge people up the wazoo. Multiple thousands of dollars a developer seat did not a popular language make.
-josh
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.