I think more interesting than 'who made X first' is 'what did X mean to A vs B'. So irrespective of whether Simula had objects first or Smalltalk did, the debate should be how Kay's perspective of objects was different than Simula's.<p>E.g. Kay wrote:<p>> Simula can't be praised too highly, and it was a huge influence. But if you take the care to check, you will find out that what I termed "Object Oriented" was quite different from Simula in (what I thought were) important ways. And if you are looking for the earliest inventions of ideas like these, there are several that predate Simula (take a look at that HOPL II chapter mentioned above)<p>(via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580308" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580308</a>)<p>Some of the context is covered in the write-up, but there's more. E.g. one thing I hear from Kay is that objects are some kind of replacement for thinking about computing as procedures + data structures. And perhaps that we're still exploring the objects idea stuck into the old context (of procedures) rather than a new context of objects-only.
This article seems to imply without coming out and saying it that Alan has inflated his own historical importance or claimed to invent things he didn't. But anyone familiar with even a small portion of his writing and speaking knows how eagerly and thoroughly he gives credit to others, including Nygaard and Dahl. A couple out-of-context quotes picked out of 50+ years of work don't count for much when the overall record is obvious and clear. Therefore, what a silly molehill. There's no controversy here, why create it?
I've been seeing this meme recently that object-oriented programming is not what we think it is, but rather that it's some other ethereal quality which does not exist as a paradigm in modern languages. Isn't it fair to say that object-oriented programming is what the huge amount of C++/Java/C#/etc programmers perceive it to be, rather than some ideal envisioned by dead languages like Smalltalk and Simula?
Kay's 1993 writeup on Smalltalk history is a worthwhile read, if you're into OO, PL, or computing in general. He gets into his 1966 exposure to Simula.<p><a href="http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/</a>