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.)
Hey Casey, Even though the docs on (http://docs.selflanguage.org/ , which you have probably seen :)) are a nice start. They are far from complete. My approach was to set me a small goal of what I wanted to do with self. I wanted to get rid of the grey background and put in a nice pic. Turns out I fabulously failed at it, because I wen't deeper and deeper down the system until there was noting more I could do, than contributing to our Klein VM written in Self :D
So instead of reading the docs from beginning to end, just jump into the image (and make a backup of it, best a clean fresh one, git comes there in pretty handy), consult them when there is something you can't quite grasp. But the self environment is really a playground. And you can of course always ask in the IRC channel fro a quick answer :) (I tend to shift my day night rhythm towards the american one on good days :D)
Cheers Jan On Dec 27, 2010, at 6:56 AM, Casey Ransberger wrote:
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
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
The ECOOP95 tutorial is a very good place to start.
http://selflanguage.org/_static/tutorial/Tutorial/index.html
The papers are great too, but most of them describe Self 1 or 2 with features like parent priorities and privacy that were later removed. That causes a lot of confusion to new Self programmers.
-- Jecel
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
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
Lol, now I know that guilt works... :)
I think you need a Github account. I don't want to make my account details the default because they are the same for the source tree.
If this is a big deal for people, I could set up our own wiki and allow anonymous editing, but I'd prefer to avoid the hassle.
Russell
On 28/12/2010, at 4:38 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
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
OK, I've put my day-one notes from creating the IRC client:
https://github.com/russellallen/self/wiki/Thoughts-On-Creating-The-IRC-Clien...
I've got two images that need to be added to the page - anyone know if there's a way to upload them to github for linking? If not I can put them up on an external server, but I'd like to keep it contained to github.
Josh
Lol, now I know that guilt works... :)
I think you need a Github account. I don't want to make my account details the default because they are the same for the source tree.
If this is a big deal for people, I could set up our own wiki and allow anonymous editing, but I'd prefer to avoid the hassle.
Russell
On 28/12/2010, at 4:38 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
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
Hi Josh,
The wiki is a git repo, so if you use git then any file can be added to it. You then can do a link to it from your page with [[my image|Clean.snap]]. I don't know how to do this from the github gui, sorry.
Your notes are great. Two issues I can immediately see are:
- how to share transporter files isn't as clear as it should be - printing sends the text to stdout, but when starting worlds by double clicking the snapshot on Macs, stdout disappears without a trace.
Both these are fixable :)
- Russell
On 29/12/2010, at 1:19 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
OK, I've put my day-one notes from creating the IRC client:
https://github.com/russellallen/self/wiki/Thoughts-On-Creating-The-IRC-Clien...
I've got two images that need to be added to the page - anyone know if there's a way to upload them to github for linking? If not I can put them up on an external server, but I'd like to keep it contained to github.
Josh
Lol, now I know that guilt works... :)
I think you need a Github account. I don't want to make my account details the default because they are the same for the source tree.
If this is a big deal for people, I could set up our own wiki and allow anonymous editing, but I'd prefer to avoid the hassle.
Russell
On 28/12/2010, at 4:38 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
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
Hi Josh,
The wiki is a git repo, so if you use git then any file can be added to it. You then can do a link to it from your page with [[my image|Clean.snap]]. I don't know how to do this from the github gui, sorry.
Don't seem able to get a fork of the wiki repo. I've forked the main repo, and this page:
https://github.com/blog/699-making-github-more-open-git-backed-wikis
claims that I should be able to pull the wiki repo by adding .wiki to my clone url, but I just get the following unhelpful error message:
Cloning into self.wiki... fatal: '/data/repositories/d/nw/d8/99/50/67046/1213259.wiki.git' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
I've done some googling, but haven't found any other pointers on how to get a fork of the github wiki. Anyone got experience with it?
Your notes are great. Two issues I can immediately see are:
- how to share transporter files isn't as clear as it should be
- printing sends the text to stdout, but when starting worlds by double clicking the snapshot on Macs, stdout disappears without a trace.
I've put another days worth of notes up on the wiki:
https://github.com/russellallen/self/wiki/Thoughts-On-Creating-The-IRC-Clien...)
All I can say about the writing is that it's better than 'Journey to Promethea' (a touch of insomnia and netflix streaming just brought me to that made-for-mystery-science-theatre classic).
Happy New Year everyone,
Josh
I've added your github login as a collaborator for the Self repository - give cloning the wiki repo again and see if that helps :)
git clone git@github.com:russellallen/self.wiki.git
- Russell
On 02/01/2011, at 12:01 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
Hi Josh,
The wiki is a git repo, so if you use git then any file can be added to it. You then can do a link to it from your page with [[my image|Clean.snap]]. I don't know how to do this from the github gui, sorry.
Don't seem able to get a fork of the wiki repo. I've forked the main repo, and this page:
https://github.com/blog/699-making-github-more-open-git-backed-wikis
claims that I should be able to pull the wiki repo by adding .wiki to my clone url, but I just get the following unhelpful error message:
Cloning into self.wiki... fatal: '/data/repositories/d/nw/d8/99/50/67046/1213259.wiki.git' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
I've done some googling, but haven't found any other pointers on how to get a fork of the github wiki. Anyone got experience with it?
Your notes are great. Two issues I can immediately see are:
- how to share transporter files isn't as clear as it should be
- printing sends the text to stdout, but when starting worlds by double clicking the snapshot on Macs, stdout disappears without a trace.
I've put another days worth of notes up on the wiki:
https://github.com/russellallen/self/wiki/Thoughts-On-Creating-The-IRC-Clien...)
All I can say about the writing is that it's better than 'Journey to Promethea' (a touch of insomnia and netflix streaming just brought me to that made-for-mystery-science-theatre classic).
Happy New Year everyone,
Josh
self-interest@lists.selflanguage.org
-
Casey Ransberger -
Jan-Paul Bultmann -
Jecel Assumpcao Jr. -
Josh Flowers -
Russell Allen