[self-interest] Re: The initial Self World

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

> I somehow managed to get Self 4.0 to run on a SPARCstation here at my
> workplace. Now I can understand better a lot of things that I knew in
> theory, but couldn´t feel in practice.

It is great to use this list to talk about using Self instead of
just implementing it. While I found Self just what I had expected
from reading about it, it seems that most people are very surprised
by the difference between practive and theory.

> I am experimenting a little with the empty Self world, that is the bare
> VM. I tried to do the following:
> self _AddSlots: ( | prims = _PrimitiveList . credits = _Credits | )

This would have worked just as well if you eliminated the initial
"self" in the expression. When a receiver is missing in a Self
expression, self is implied. There is a difference when this is
used inside a method: "x: 2" will send "x:" to self but start the
message lookup with the method's local slots, while "self x: 2"
will also send "x:" to self but will look it up starting the with
receiver's slots. Note that the message receiver is always a parent
of the executing method (through the "self*" slot).

> This was successful and added the two slots to the lobby (strangely one
> cannot access the lobby with the "lobby" selector, but with "self"
> because the VM# prompt evaluation context is the lobby).

This is because the "lobby" slot is only added to lobby when you
file in "init.self" to create a non empty world.

> Unfortunately, what I wanted to do was to invoke the credits slot as a
> method slot, so that it would print the credits. Instead, the result was
> that it only kept the returned object (´Thanks!´) on the slot.

You created a constant slot which has as its value the result of
evaluating the expression "_Credits" in the context of the lobby.
I found it strange that sending _Credits to the lobby just returned
the string 'Thanks', but I tried it and you are right - it has a
side effect of printing a lot of stuff on the terminal, but the
result is just this short string.

> Then I
> tried another idea:
> self _AddSlots: ( | prims = _PrimitiveList . credits = [ _Credits ] | )
> Yes, a block. Perhaps I could invoke the primitive with "self credits
> value".
> Unfortunately it didn´t work. It only complained about non-lifo blocks
> invocation after the block´s enclosing scope has returned.

This is a limitation that Self has but Smalltalk doesn't. After the
expression that created a block has finished executing, you can no
longer use that block because that doesn't make sense with a simple
stack implementation. Smalltalk uses a linked list of context objects,
this isn't a problem (except for the Smalltalk implementor ;-)

Note that what Smalltalk does with non LIFO (last in, first out) blocks
you can do in Self just as well by creating lots of anonymous little
objects (something you can't do in Smalltalk).

> Does anyone know a workaround to really INVOKING a primitive from a slot
> of the lobby (or generically any object)?

Please note that your problem has nothing to do with primitives. Try:

  _AddSlots: ( | credits = ( _Credits ) | )

Now credits is a constant slot that has a method that invokes the
primitive as its value, instead of the result of invoking the primitive.
You can type "self credits" or simply "credits" and get what you
want.

Please compare the following:

   _AddSlots: ( | cvec = vector _Clone: 3 Filler: 9 | )

   _AddSlots: ( | nvec = (vector _Clone: 3 Filler: 9) | )

   cvec _At: 1 Put: 5

   nvec _At: 1 Put: 5

It sure looks like they are the same so far, doesn't it? But this

VM# cvec
<20>: ( | parent* = <1>. | object array: {9, 5, 9} )
VM# nvec
<22>: ( | parent* = <1>. | object array: {9, 9, 9} )
VM#

shows that there is a difference. nvec is a method which returns
a new vector every time it is invoked, while cvec is a constant slot
which returns the same vector every time it is invoked. I was going
to do this without a primitive to show that it is a different issue,
but in the empty world there are no non-primitive methods...

-- Jecel


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