Reliability of language.

[Guilherme]

Hello everyone...

I found it very intuitive way of programming language. It is an amazing simplicity of creating and presenting a great power!

After reading and researching a lot about the language, I am interested in using the Self for some academic applications. However, I want to highlight some important points regarding the functioning of language in order to compare with others and do some performance tests.
One of the things that I am not able to find, as is the reliability of language, and answers that are only who knows the language thoroughly can answer me.
My main questions are:

- What are the types supported by the language?
- There is type checking? It is at compile time or run?
- The language is strongly typed weakly or not?

Another important item, which I personally find it extremely useful in my Java applications, it's about handling exceptions.
The Self has exception handling? If yes, what commands to use the treatment?