[self-interest] Re: [Fwd: The initial Self World]

Douglas Atique datique at alcatel.com.br
Tue May 25 11:43:40 UTC 1999


Oops, forgot to send to the list...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [self-interest] Re: The initial Self World
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 08:42:03 -0300
From: Douglas Atique <datique at alcatel.com.br>
Organization: Alcatel Telecom
To: david.ungar at eng.sun.com
References: <"v04204e01b36f9a91a5e0(a)(091)152.70.20.120(093)*"@MHS>

Hello, Dave (may I call you Dave?)
You see, it is a very different feeling to see the VM running and find
out
that it is no more than a program. It is not something from another
world, as
I was imagining after looking at the source code.
Though I have tried the graphical UI, I cannot use it frequently
because:
1) the workstation from which I am borrowing CPU cycles has only 64 MB
RAM
and runs an intranet web server (not a good idea to load it, right?)
2) I run Self through my Windows PC, with a freeware X server, which
does not
have many of the Solaris fonts.
Anyway, I am glad to be able to run the empty VM because I am interested
in
evaluating the read-eval-print loop, in order to diagnose the correct
behavior I should expect for my bytecode interpreter. Now reading the
source
code makes more sense, even with those crazy Resource memory allocation
schemes and unusual friend class "constructors".
This is why I believe that a portable bytecode interpreter should help
other
people (that can´t access a SPARC) to see and understand Self in
practice.
My first goal is to master using the empty VM in the most ways I can,
like an
assembly programmer ;-) Then I will look at more application-oriented
Self
programming.
If you can (perhaps Sun has some technology-transfer-restriction policy
:-)
and feel like discussing internals, I appreciate. I know sometimes I
don´t
understand things very well, but the Self implementation is complex and
I am
only learning. I know I will get there and I know Self can get there,
too.
One day I'll (or we'll) make it a complete operating environment.
Regards,
Douglas

david.ungar at eng.sun.com wrote:

> I'm glad you have a SPARC to play with Self on, and
> it sounds as though Jecel has already answered your questions.
>
> Have your tried either of the UIs yet?
> They offer more visual ways to explore than in the empty world.
>
> - Dave
>
> At 9:09 AM -0300 5/20/99, Douglas Atique wrote:
> >Hi, folks!
> >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.
> >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 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).
> >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. 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.
> >Does anyone know a workaround to really INVOKING a primitive from a slot
> >of the lobby (or generically any object)?
> >
> >Regards,
> >Douglas
> >
> >
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>
>     David Ungar
>     Sun Microsystems Laboratories
>     (650) 336-2618
>
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