[self-interest] Re: An OO history

[Steve Dekorte]

Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
 > Little Smalltalk 4 has a virtual machine of around 30KB and an image
 > (badly encoded - could be much smaller) of 82.4KB. I see no reason why
 > a "Little Self" couldn't be even smaller than this. A simple
 > interpreter would be slow, of course, but would probably at least beat
 > TCL ;-)

I think a "Little Self" that was as "small" and at least as fast as the 
common web scripting languages(Python, Perl) would give the language 
it's best shot at getting widespread use. I guess that may have never 
been a goal of the original Self project, but it seems to me that it is 
the shared goal of all these other Self implementations.

 > Language elements in general, but syntax most of all, are a matter of
 > taste, so it makes no sense to talk about making it better or worse.

It does if you value people choosing to use the language.

Syntax seems to have been a barrier to the general use of the most 
technically advanced high level languages (Lisp and Smalltalk). Would we 
have had to wait 20 years to see things like garbage collection used in 
a mainstream language if these languages hadn't been so ambitious?

  It's interesting that the two languages of the web are split on their 
adoption of these two innovations of Self - JavaScript got a proto 
object model and Java got some of the compiler technology.

Steve