Employees were promised a beta version of the new 4404 Smalltalk (and AI) machine if we could propose and then create an engaging demo program. Since I had been working on animation scripting applications I proposed to personify playback of recorded demos by introducing a talking robot.
The robot would be a small talking head that would explain operations as they played with voice bubbles rather than sound which might not work well on an exhibit floor.
I instrumented the ui so as to recognize distinct events, record them as scripts, and then play them back at various speeds as the robot explains what is happing. I gave almost daily demos so I thought I would start by recording these.
The Smalltalk ui was organized as a hierarchy of agents that held control or passed it on as it seemed the user's intention. There was no point past which events flowed. This meant I had to understand, modify, and debug every Controller. I jumped in.
Playback was even more of an uphill battle. Smalltalk was all about being what the user wanted and didn't easily take instructions from my robot. My previous animations operated on my figures in my window and had complete freedom to have them do as I wanted. Once I stepped out of that window it was me against every other Smalltalk developer and their relationship with their user.
I got some examples working but I don't think my robots ever performed on the exhibit floor. They gave me a beta 4404 anyway and it is still in my basement.