Summary

The post argues that Alan Kay's original vision of object-oriented programming was fundamentally about messaging between independent systems—not class hierarchies—a vision that maps directly onto how the internet works. The author introduces his 'Abject' project, which realizes this vision through an 'Ask Protocol' where every object can explain its own interface in plain English, with LLMs serving as the runtime bridge. This approach eliminates the need for manually coded glue between systems, allowing objects to discover and compose with each other through conversation rather than hard-coded integration.

Key Insight

Alan Kay's true vision of OOP was always about late-bound messaging between autonomous systems—not class hierarchies—and LLMs now make it finally practical by letting objects discover and bridge each other's interfaces through natural language conversation.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 4

  The big idea is 'messaging' — that is what the kernel of Smalltalk/Squeak is all about... The key in making great and growable systems is much more to design how its modules communicate rather than what their internal properties and behaviors should be.

• 6

  The internet is not one giant class hierarchy; it is independent systems sending messages across agreed boundaries.

• 3

  Any object can ask another object, in plain English, 'How do I save this sketch?' and the storage object can answer with the exact message shape it accepts.

• 2

  You no longer have to manually glue them together.

• 4

  It's a simple idea but a powerful one. Hard to grasp its scope. Kind of like the Schrödinger equation. You can put it on a t-shirt but spend a lifetime trying to understand it.

Tone

passionate and idealistic, with a reverent, historical framing that builds toward a personal manifesto