Adele Goldberg(1945 — ?)
Adele Goldberg
États-Unis
8 min read
American computer scientist, Adele Goldberg worked at Xerox PARC in the 1970s where she co-developed the Smalltalk programming language and helped invent the modern graphical user interface. Her work directly influenced Steve Jobs and the design of the Macintosh.
Key Facts
- Co-developed the Smalltalk language at Xerox PARC starting in 1970
- Smalltalk is one of the first object-oriented programming languages
- Her work at PARC inspired Steve Jobs during his visit in 1979
- First female president of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) in 1984
- Co-founded ParcPlace Systems in 1988 to commercialize Smalltalk
Works & Achievements
Co-developed with Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls at Xerox PARC, Smalltalk is the first fully object-oriented language with an integrated graphical interface. It directly inspired Java, Python, Ruby, and virtually all modern programming languages.
A definitive reference work co-authored by Goldberg that precisely defines the Smalltalk-80 language, nicknamed "the Blue Book." It became the bible of object-oriented programming and shaped generations of developers in the foundational concepts of modern computing.
Goldberg's second major book, describing Smalltalk's integrated development environment. It introduced the concept of a code "browser" (class browser), an idea that went on to influence every modern development environment.
A visionary article describing the personal computer of the future as a dynamic medium accessible to everyone, including children. This foundational text anticipated the rise of the internet, tablets, and touchscreen interfaces by several decades.
A company founded by Goldberg to bring Smalltalk-80 to professional enterprises. ParcPlace Systems was one of the first object-oriented software development publishers, helping spread this paradigm throughout the global computing industry.
Anecdotes
During Steve Jobs's famous visit to Xerox PARC in December 1979, it was Adele Goldberg herself who vigorously opposed it. She feared that showing the graphical interface and Smalltalk to a direct competitor would amount to handing Apple billions of dollars. She was ultimately outvoted by Xerox management, and history proved her right: Jobs drew directly on those demonstrations when designing the Macintosh.
Goldberg was one of the first computer scientists to experiment with teaching programming to children. At Xerox PARC, she had elementary school students learn Smalltalk to demonstrate that the language was intuitive enough to be mastered by any user. This educational approach profoundly influenced the design philosophy behind modern graphical interfaces.
Goldberg wrote much of the official Smalltalk-80 documentation, most notably the reference book 'Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation,' published in 1983. This manual, nicknamed 'the blue book' by programmers because of its cover, became a bible for thousands of developers and helped spread the concepts of object-oriented programming worldwide.
In 1984, Adele Goldberg was elected president of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), one of the largest professional computing associations in the world. She was one of the first women to hold this position in a field that was still overwhelmingly male-dominated, symbolizing the recognition of her exceptional contribution to computer science.
In 1988, dissatisfied with the way Xerox was commercializing Smalltalk, Goldberg co-founded ParcPlace Systems to bring the language to market commercially. This company was one of the first to sell a professional object-oriented development environment, paving the way for the commercial rise of this paradigm throughout the 1990s.
Primary Sources
The Smalltalk-80 system is an example of the kind of computing environment that can make personal computing truly personal. The system provides its users with a consistent interface to an extensible set of objects.
The learning environment must allow the learner to move from simple to complex. The computer is particularly suited for this because it can simulate almost any kind of dynamical system and can be made responsive to the learner's actions.
The Smalltalk-80 programming environment provides its users with a set of tools for creating, examining, and modifying programs while they are running. The browser is the primary tool for examining and editing the class descriptions.
The Smalltalk-80 system grew out of a vision for personal computing developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center during the 1970s. The goal was to create a powerful, interactive computing environment accessible to non-programmers.
Key Places
Research laboratory founded in 1970 where Goldberg worked for nearly two decades, co-developing Smalltalk and helping invent the modern graphical user interface. This deliberately creative campus brought together some of the greatest minds in computer science from around the world.
Goldberg earned her PhD in mathematics and computer science here in 1973. This rigorous academic training gave her the theoretical foundations essential to her contributions to the design of Smalltalk.
Goldberg completed her bachelor's degree in mathematics here in 1967. It was at this major research university that she discovered the emerging field of computer science and decided to dedicate her career to it.
The unique technology ecosystem where Goldberg's entire career flourished. The proximity of Xerox PARC, Stanford, Apple, and future technology giants created an unparalleled environment for innovation that amplified the global impact of her work.