[self-interest] Small announcement

[David Ungar]

Interesting stuff!

- Dave





>At 11:32 01/01/2001 -0800, Kyle wrote:
>>
>>I'm in San Francisco.  We should meet some time.  Drop me a note.  Jecel and
>>I actually met in person for a few short weeks a few years ago in Brazil. 
>>Even though we couldn't "geek" as much as we might have liked (my wife was
>>there too), the few hours we spent in front of a computer were quite
>>productive.  I've always been a "whiteboard" kind of guy and find that
>>talking this over with others with a whiteboard helps moving things forward
>>much more quickly.
>
>I would like to sit in on such a meeting myself. I have been considering a
>language design based on prototyping and implmented with partial
>compilation/JIT compilation and metaobject threaded interpretation. The
>programs would compile first to a platform-independent description of
>syntax and semantics (similar to the 'slim binaries' used in some
>implementations of Oberon), which would be compiled again into a
>stand-alone executable. Internally, the interpreter would be a meta-class
>of the base 'Object' class. Methods would pass right to left, with any
>invocation of objects without a method passed to them returning a reference
>to the object. As a rough example of one syntax I've been considering:
>
>HelloWorld := Program new: [
>    "Hello World!" show;
>  ] end: HelloWorld;
>
>As you can see, I'm looking at a combination of Smalltalk and Pascal style
>syntax (note specifically the 'positive close' at the end). While it's not
>clear here, my ideas are also heavily influenced by Scheme; the brackets
>enclosing the program body, in fact, form a a list literal. I'd been
>considering a LISP-like syntax as another possible approach, but I have
>serious reservations about it. While I am willing to try out more than one
>language concept, perfectionism, combined with a lack of time and/or
>self-confidence, has held me back from experimenting. Seeing what others
>are doing or considering might just get me finally started...
>
>ObSelf: I would also like to contribute to any attempt at either a Linux or
>a Windows port of Self.
>
>
>J Osako
>Operating Systems Designer, Notational Engineer, Generalist
>http://www.slip.net/~scholr/

-- 


     David Ungar
     Sun Microsystems Laboratories
     (650) 336-2618