SynApps The Open Source and Gadget blog

The List Universe published "10 Developments That Changed The Face Of Computing". They are (in reverse order of importance): the Web, Photoshop, VisiCalc, WordStar, CP/M, EMACS, Unix, C, Smalltalk, Xerox Alto Operating System.

So the Xerox Alto OS changed the face of computing the most, followed by Smalltalk. Both from the early seventies.

If you read about the great achievments of Google Chrome: A JavaScript VM, real garbarge collection, threads. Umm - a graphical user interface. Speed. User experience?

Xerox Alto OS had Smalltalk-80 on it and it was the first graphical user interface. As Wikipedia.us has it: "A trip to Xerox PARC by Apple Computer's Steve Jobs in 1979 led to the graphical user interface and mouse being integrated into the Apple Lisa and, later, the firstMacintosh^[3]. Steve Jobs was shown the Smalltalk-80 programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven GUI interface provided by the Alto."

Like Firefox, Webkit and Chrome. Open technology becomes improved and expoited by proprietary technology. Java and Ruby got a lot of ideas from Smalltalk. VM's come from Smalltalk. Pretty amazing that all this was 35 years ago! Instead we are struggeling with garbage like DOM's, JavaScript and browser incompatabilities. Progress is not a straight line...

PS: All this technologies, except may be the Web, are now more like exhibits in the "Museum of Computer History". I spent a lot of my life with 9 of the 10 - the only exception being EMACS. I used vi - and I *strongly* believe *it* should be on the list rather than EMACS.