Smalltalk Introduction. Smalltalk has a history with roots in FLEX and SIMULA. It was invented by Alan Kay, whose philosophy was to develop a programming language that was high-level enough that even children would be able to use it; hence the name "Smalltalk." Smalltalk has had broad influence on other programming languages, and is still one of the most concise and eloquent systems extant, despite its age. Squeak is an open source implementation of Smalltalk.