[self-interest] Hello! (or, What's the best way to learn Self?)

[Josh Flowers]

Russell, you've properly guilted me into sharing my 'creating an irc client' notes - or maybe you've just played on my competitive nature - either way I've re-read the notes I took when creating the irc client and find them surprisingly readable.  Maybe not blog posting material, but certainly wiki worthy.

I tried adding a page to the github wiki linked below, but was asked for a name and password.  Do I need to signup for a github account, or do we have a standard Self login/pass?  If it's easier I can just send you a copy of my text file and you can post it up, but it has a couple pictures attached so might take some amount of work to get on the wiki.

Thanks Russell - just let me know how you want me to proceed.

Josh

> Hi Casey,
> 
> I'd give my thumbs up to all these hints :)
> 
> What would be really useful, if you can do it, would be if you could keep notes (no matter how sketchy!) on your thoughts during the process and share them on the wiki at https://github.com/russellallen/self/wiki
> 
> Maybe start a page called 'Thoughts on Encountering Self' or something...
> 
> Because the bits you have issues with other people with probably also have issues :)
> 
> - Russell
> 
> On 28/12/2010, at 5:37 AM, Josh Flowers wrote:
> 
>> 
>> If you haven't done it already download the demo snapshot 
>> (demo.snap at http://selflanguage.org/download/index.html) and run 
>> it.  It's a live walkthrough tutorial that teaches you the basics.
>> 
>> And one of the great things about Self is that once you know the 
>> basics you can discover how to do just about anything else (I have a 
>> personal caveat to that statement, but I won't hijack this thread with 
>> it).
>> 
>> Good luck Casey,
>> 
>> Josh
>> 
>>> Forgive the newbie! I've been lurking for awhile, figured it was time.
>>> 
>>> I found Squeak about three years ago, and it tied a lot of loose threads together for this particular token SIGPLAN weenie. I've read most of the Self papers, and am fascinated/awed by the object model. In a lot of ways it's close to an ideal to me.
>>> 
>>> Smalltalk had this strange, unexpected effect on me: it crystalized things for me in a way that hadn't happened since Lisp, and before that, assembler. A lot of my preconceptions about programming disappeared into message passing, it's one of those new ideas that subsumes and unifies a set of old ideas. 
>>> 
>>> I'm really excited about Self, because it attacks the few things that were hurdles for me when I was learning Smalltalk. What's the difference between a Class Variable and a Class Instance Variable, and why would a Class Instance Variable be different from an Instance Variable? And WTF is a "Pool Dictionary" anyway? It seems we don't speak of them for some reason:P 
>>> 
>>> It's really good to see so much buzz around the system. When I first started reading about it, Self was a dead language, one of those mysterious wonders I would hear spoken about with reverence in mostly empty halls, lost to a microprocessor gone out of vogue, and only present like some distant, unseen celestial body, in the influence it exerts on other objects in its domain. 
>>> 
>>> Now I'm hearing about new releases and it works on x86! Thank you!
>>> 
>>> I figured I'd ask what a good starting point might be for picking up the syntax and UI: I grok the object model pretty well (I think.)
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Casey Ransberger
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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