[self-interest] Self (and OOP) noob says Hi!

[Jim Wise]

Russell Allen <mail at russell-allen.com> writes:

> Hi Duke,
>
> The three main current sources of documentation are the tutorial as
> Casey mentioned, the manual at docs.selflanguage.org and the various
> papers on the website (though these can be out of date!).
>
> Also the wiki: https://github.com/russellallen/self/wiki

Is there a ps or pdf version of the handbook from docs.selflanguage.org
(I see that the main website notes this is `coming soon')?  Also, I
assume the Demo snapshot also serves as the best body of example code
out there -- is there anywhere else I should be looking?  I've found the
bibliography on selflanguage.org very helpful for `getting' self, but
could use to look at a lot more code...


One main question I had: I notice that `Parents are Shared Parts:
Inheritance and Encapsulation in Self' (1991) gives an extensive
description of the sender-path-tiebreaker rule, prioritized multiple
inheritance, and some thoughts on backtracking in receiver finding, but
by the time of `Programming as an Experience: The Inspiration for Self'
(1995), these are described as a design mistake.  Were these mechanisms
removed from the language, and if so, what is the current mechanism for
resolution of same-named slots in parents inherited through different
parent slots?

>From the point of view of 16 years further on, how do these design
choices look, and what would you do about resends, if you were designing
Self today?  I ask because in other languages supporting MI, the
linearization (local or global) rules for method lookup often seem to
require as much description as the entire rest of the inheritance model
(Scala, C++), have extensive special-case features to control
re-dispatch (CLOS) or are simply unresolved issues, perhaps even
allowing programmers to switch between available models at program run
time (Perl).


Also, as a word of thanks, I'd like to say that, coming mainly from
lisp, ml, and Objective-C and having dabbled with Smalltalk several
times over the years, experimenting with Self has been quite pleasant
for me.  At first glance, it feels in many ways like

         Self : Smalltalk :: Scheme : Common Lisp

-- similar language, but a reboot around a core set of principles,
consistently carried through the language, and a couple of really neat
ways to make things which would be a special-case feature of other
languages fall out of this consistency.  The use of a very simple object
model instead of elaborate systems of strongly-typed inheritance (ala
Beta or Scala) or parallel (possibly class-aware) systems of generic
programming (Scala, C++, Ada) to achieve the same goals probably
contributes to this impression.

But this may just be me trying to relate the experience to something I
already know.


It was also neat to see a mention of Kevo float by, as I wrote some
small code with that under MacOS 7 when in college (sometime after the
Sparcstation 1 boot monitor introduced me to Forth, and before the NeXT
introduced me to Objective-C :-) ).  If anyone does find the Kevo
sources, I'd also be interested to get a copy.

Thanks,
-- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise at draga.com
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