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Joe Armstrong & Alan Kay - Joe Armstrong interviews Alan Kay

Erlang Solutions · interview · Watch on YouTube

Tech pioneers & interviewsSoftware architecture & designFunctional programming

What it is

Joe Armstrong, creator of Erlang, interviews Alan Kay at Code Mesh. They discuss the meaning of object orientation, message passing, the META II paper, and the state of computer science.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN uses it in debates about what OOP originally meant, since Kay's message-passing view lines up with Erlang's processes.

  • 6 people recommended it
  • 7 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2016, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “You should check out the video[0] of Joe Armstrong interviewing Alan Kay”

    Erlang closer to Kay's intent for OOP than Smalltalk

    lliamander, 2017-01 · Recommendation · in “What Happens to OO When Processors Are Free? (2015)”

  2. “Highly recommend his thesis (2003) and a few of his great interviews/presentations”

    Joe Armstrong's interviews and presentations on better software

    dpeck, 2019-04 · Recommendation · in “Joe Armstrong has died”

  3. “I also recommend the interview he did of Alan Kay”

    Armstrong's interview of Kay as part of learning concurrency

    gens, 2020-04 · Recommendation · in “Gleam: A statically typed language for the Erlang VM”

  4. “To get some perspective on both of their perspectives, here's "Joe Armstrong interviews Alan Kay"”

    Armstrong and Kay discuss their differing perspectives on messaging and objects

    Rendello, 2021-11 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: If OOP is about message passing, why not sender.send(receiver, message)?”

  5. “I loved this interview/discussion between Kay & Joe Armstrong, inventor of Erlang”

    Kay and Armstrong discuss messaging between objects and agents

    AceJohnny2, 2025-05 · Recommendation · in “Alan Kay did not invent objects (2019)”

  6. “There is this great discussion between Joe Armstrong and Alan Kay if you haven't see it.”

    Great discussion between Armstrong and Kay on messaging

    mempko, 2026-07 · Recommendation · in “A Love Letter to Object Orientation”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: alan kay, joe armstrong, erlang, message passing, smalltalk, meta ii

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