[HN Gopher] An Efficient Implementation of SELF (1989) [pdf]
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       An Efficient Implementation of SELF (1989) [pdf]
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2025-10-25 21:01 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (courses.cs.washington.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (courses.cs.washington.edu)
        
       | klausnrooster wrote:
       | (1989)
        
         | gjvc wrote:
         | nothing better to add?
        
       | cmrdporcupine wrote:
       | These days the entire runtime is open source and easy to get
       | 
       | Decent readable C++, too. With a modern CMake build, the whole
       | bit.
       | 
       | https://github.com/russellallen/self
       | 
       | If only it had been made open source 25, 30 years ago when I was
       | really excited about this stuff. I have no idea why they kept it
       | locked up inside Sun for so long.
        
         | musicale wrote:
         | I appreciate Sun creating things like Java and improving the
         | performance of the JVM (adopting ideas from this Self runtime
         | etc.) I don't know whether it made any money for them, but it
         | certainly helped the rest of the computing field / industry.
         | 
         | Regarding Self's limited adoption, I think JavaScript showed
         | that a Self-like system could be effective and popular if it
         | used C-like syntax rather than Smalltalk-like syntax and
         | shipped in every web browser.
        
       | jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
       | This is a classic paper and descendents of its ideas show up in
       | modern JITs for highly dynamic languages.
        
         | musicale wrote:
         | JavaScript owes a lot to Self, not only in its runtime but also
         | its prototype-based object design (though perhaps that's
         | something of a liability since class-based object systems
         | turned out to be more popular.)
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-25 23:00 UTC)