Re: [Fwd: The initial Self World] - Self-interest

25 May 1999

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [self-interest] Re: The initial Self World
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 08:42:03 -0300
From: Douglas Atique datique@alcatel.com.br
Organization: Alcatel Telecom
To: david.ungar@eng.sun.com
References: <"v04204e01b36f9a91a5e0(a)(091)152.70.20.120(093)*"@MHS>
Hello, Dave (may I call you Dave?)
You see, it is a very different feeling to see the VM running and find
out
that it is no more than a program. It is not something from another
world, as
I was imagining after looking at the source code.
Though I have tried the graphical UI, I cannot use it frequently
because:
1) the workstation from which I am borrowing CPU cycles has only 64 MB
RAM
and runs an intranet web server (not a good idea to load it, right?)
2) I run Self through my Windows PC, with a freeware X server, which
does not
have many of the Solaris fonts.
Anyway, I am glad to be able to run the empty VM because I am interested
in
evaluating the read-eval-print loop, in order to diagnose the correct
behavior I should expect for my bytecode interpreter. Now reading the
source
code makes more sense, even with those crazy Resource memory allocation
schemes and unusual friend class "constructors".
This is why I believe that a portable bytecode interpreter should help
other
people (that can´t access a SPARC) to see and understand Self in
practice.
My first goal is to master using the empty VM in the most ways I can,
like an
assembly programmer ;-) Then I will look at more application-oriented
Self
programming.
If you can (perhaps Sun has some technology-transfer-restriction policy
:-)
and feel like discussing internals, I appreciate. I know sometimes I
don´t
understand things very well, but the Self implementation is complex and
I am
only learning. I know I will get there and I know Self can get there,
too.
One day I'll (or we'll) make it a complete operating environment.
Regards,
Douglas
david.ungar@eng.sun.com wrote:
...
I'm glad you have a SPARC to play with Self on, and
it sounds as though Jecel has already answered your questions.
Have your tried either of the UIs yet?
They offer more visual ways to explore than in the empty world.

Dave

At 9:09 AM -0300 5/20/99, Douglas Atique wrote:
...
Hi, folks!
I somehow managed to get Self 4.0 to run on a SPARCstation here at my
workplace. Now I can understand better a lot of things that I knew in
theory, but couldn´t feel in practice.
I am experimenting a little with the empty Self world, that is the bare
VM. I tried to do the following:
self _AddSlots: ( | prims = _PrimitiveList . credits = _Credits | )
This was successful and added the two slots to the lobby (strangely one
cannot access the lobby with the "lobby" selector, but with "self"
because the VM# prompt evaluation context is the lobby).
Unfortunately, what I wanted to do was to invoke the credits slot as a
method slot, so that it would print the credits. Instead, the result was
that it only kept the returned object (´Thanks!´) on the slot. Then I
tried another idea:
self _AddSlots: ( | prims = _PrimitiveList . credits = [ _Credits ] | )
Yes, a block. Perhaps I could invoke the primitive with "self credits
value".
Unfortunately it didn´t work. It only complained about non-lifo blocks
invocation after the block´s enclosing scope has returned.
Does anyone know a workaround to really INVOKING a primitive from a slot
of the lobby (or generically any object)?
Regards,
Douglas

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