[self-interest] Re: Only one SELF?

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

Thanks for the update on OpenSelf, Marko! I'll just make a few
comments.

> Even the
> parser can be written in Self (the bootstrap parser can be linked when needed).

A bootstrap parser is needed when creating a new "Self world" from
nothing (or rather, from a bunch of .self files), but that isn't
something you can't live without as Smalltalk has been proving
since 1974...

>   Fortunately we have already a "standard": the Self 4 release, so anyone who
> doeas a VM and mantains a compatible parser and runtime is not fragmenting
> the Self community but's adding more experience and differetiation of
> implementation, wich can be very productive (if the code amount is relatively
> small) because experimental project forks (like egcs) are difficult to mantain.

Agreed. Which is why I have come to the conclusion that it is best
for me to avoid any incompatibilities for now (like the parallelism
in tinySelf 1 or my 3D GUI). I have never been very interested in
being able to load Self 4 snapshots into Self/R, but now I see there
are important non-technical reasons to do so.

>   I'm pleased to see that someone likes the idea of starting all over.

And I am pleased that we are not talking about starting over in the
sense of making a new language just inspired by Self's ideas (like
what happened during the whole 1990s without getting us anywhere).

But, as they said in the Highlander movies, in the end there can
be only one :-)

-- Jecel