Оказывается, ранний смоллток был концептуально очень похож на модель Акторов, но позже деградировал. Вероятно, смоллток-80 уже не отражал в полной мере идеи Алана Кея, они были существенно искажены в этой реализации:
The AlanKay definition of OO is largely that given by CarlHewitt for the ActorsModel which is a model of computation, not a programming paradigm. AlanKay has acknowledged explicitly this derivation. Versions of Smalltalk before Smalltalk-80 were still largely based on the (asynchronous, unidirectional) ActorsModel of computation, but with Smalltalk-80, the developers of SmalltalkLanguage switched entirely to the (synchronous, bidirectional) procedural model, while misleadingly retaining the ActorsModel terminology (such as «messages» for what essentially are procedure calls rather than one-way notifications). This has caused endless terminological difficulties especially when considering that the the other major sources of OO thinking--capability architectures and the SIMULA 67 research--were not in the least inspired by ActorsModel thinking.