Adele Goldberg (computer scientist)

Adele Goldberg (born July 22, 1945) is a computer scientist who wrote or co-wrote books on the programming language Smalltalk-80. In the 1970s she worked for Xerox's PARC laboratory on the Xerox Alto. According to Adele, Steve Jobs demanded a demonstration of the Smalltalk System, which she refused to give him. Her superiors eventually ordered her to, at which point she complied, satisfied that the decision to "give away the kitchen sink" to Jobs and his team was then their responsibility. Apple eventually used many of the ideas in the Alto and their implementations as the basis for their Macintosh desktop.

She is currently working for Neometron, Inc., of Palo Alto, California. Goldberg was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. In 1994 she was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Selected publications

• Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation (with David Robson), Addison-Wesley, 1983, ISBN 0-201-11371-6 (out of print; known as the "blue book" to Smalltalk people)
• Smalltalk-80: the Interactive Programming Environment, Addison-Wesley, 1984, ISBN 0-201-11372-4 (the "orange book")
• Smalltalk-80: The Language (with David Robson), Addison-Wesley, 1989, ISBN 0-201-13688-0 (the "purple book" - a revision of the "blue book")

References

External links

• A brief biography
• Some more information on Dr. Goldberg's career from STJA '99 conference in Erfurt, Germany
• Smalltalk FAQ (reference for publications)
• Neometron