Source: Seminar with Alan Kay on Object Oriented Programming (VPRI 0246)

We are going from a procedural style, which controls past explicitly around, to a declarative style in which we are simply indicating needs, and the system, without having to do any problem solving, is picking up the slack by providing the actual information in the form of a message. Hypercard has this about halfway. It's a technique that we have been experimenting with at Apple.

What it looks like it's able to do is to completely remove the necessity for actually being able to follow a control flow. What does it mean when we move an object from one place to another? When you move an object from some place into this kind of situation, nothing is going to happen to the object unless you recode some other object. The modularity of being able to move an object from one place to another depends on me being able to do some kind of modification and the system is already there that's not so good it's good in the sense that this object is guaranteed not to hurt anybody and it's going to protect its own self from being moving moved around but in fact I still to go in and make some sort of modification to control the flow.

When I put a new blue guy here and he has all his need specified is he going to be able to run? Yes because he is not intertwined with anybody else's control. He's simply saying I know what I need! God damn it! The question is if the system is able to deliver those needs just because he is a new thing and the answer seems to be yes.