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.