Object-Oriented Programming (VB version) by Richard Pawson v1.0.0 ©Richard Pawson, 2020. The moral right of the author has been asserted. This document is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The author is willing, in principle, to grant permission for distribution of derivative versions, on a case by case basis, and may be contacted as
[email protected]. ‘Metal Up’ is a registered trademark, number UK00003361893. Author’s acknowledgements I am indebted to John Stout who has acted as a continuous reviewer throughout the writing of this book, offering many corrections and improvements to both text and program code. Responsibility for any remaining errors remains mine alone – please report any that you find to me as
[email protected]. Foreword by Alan Kay In my first day in grad school in 1966, the head of the department gave me a thesis from just a few years earlier: “Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Communications System” by Ivan Sutherland at MIT. It completely turned upside down my ideas about computing. It was not just the invention of interactive computer graphics, but also allowed the user to define complex “Ideas” — such as beams for a bridge, rivets, transistors, linkages, text characters, and much more — produce as many “instances” of each Idea as needed to make more complex assemblies (which could themselves be turned into Ideas) — then use goal-solving graphical programming to give the Ideas dynamic relationships and larger simulation behaviors. For example, you could define a beam as being like a stiff spring, use many instances of them to make a bridge, hang simulated weights from the bridge, and Sketchpad would dynamically compute the tensions and compressions on the beams and show these numerically — all without the system knowing anything about beams or bridges, or even the numeral forms for numbers ahead of time.