Speaking of Squeak, who can answer a question for me: Alan Kay is on the Squeak team. I know there was an Alan Kay involved with the development of Smalltalk at Xerox PARC. But there was also a Kay involved with developing an early PC named the Kaypro, which happens to be the first computer I owned. I've seen people attribute both to Alan Kay; others say there were two different Alan Kay's; and still others say that Kaypro was founded by Andrew -- not Alan -- Kay. I know I'm now OT but I've always wondered about that. I still have that CP/M based Kaypro. 1 experience point promised to anyone who knows the real story!

Hi,

1. Andy Kay - kaypro
2. Alan Kay - smalltalk

I'll collect the experience point later ;-)

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/378

http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html

http://www.google.com.br/search?q=alan+kay

If you truly want to learn objects, you should probably learn objects in a system that is truly object oriented.

Totally agree with merlyn.

Along with Smalltalk I would take a look at Ruby (whose more traditional syntax you might find more friendly) and Eiffel (if you're of a static-typing bent.)

Much as I love Perl I wouldn't recommend it as a learning environment for OO concepts. Because of the TMTOWTDI perl approach (and the cruftyness of some of the Perl5 OO implementation) its harder to see the advantages (and disadvantages) of OO code and the OO mindset.

My advice would be to learn OO in a strictly OO language. Get into the OOA/OOD/OOP mindset. Take the best bits of what you learn and apply it back to Perl.