The Self programming language began as a dialect of Smalltalk, and initially used as an experimental test system for language design, but it has since become a language in its own right.
Self was designed in 1986 by David Ungar and Randall Smith, while they were employed at the Palo Alto Research Center, then known as Xerox PARC. The goal of the language was to create state-of-the-art object-oriented programming language research. They moved to Stanford University, where they continued the development of Self, completing its first compiler in 1987. They decided to expand the project to develop an entire system for Self, rather than just the programming language.
The first public release was in 1990. Shortly afterward, the team moved to Sun Microsystems, where they continued development on the language. New releases were issued regularly until 1995 when Sun dumped Self in favor of JavaScript.
Now available under a BSD-License, its development stagnated until 2006 when version 4.3 was released. Additional versions were produced in 2010, 2014, and 2017.
Although Self is not among the better-known languages, it influenced Agora, Factor, Io, Lisaac, Lua, NewtonScript, REBOL, and Squeak.
The focus of this category is on the programming language called Self, including any of its versions or implementations. IDEs, editors, or other tools designed for facilitating programming in the language are appropriate for this category, as are any Self user groups, forums, tutorials, or guides.
Recommended Resources
Developed by Ivan Moore, as a Ph.D. research project into automatic refactoring of object-oriented programs, at the University of Manchester, Guru is a tool that assists in Self programming. Running on Sun SPARC, Mac, and Linux, Guru is available as a free download from SourceForge. Given a collection of Self objects, Guru produces an equivalent set of objects in which there is no duplication of methods or certain types of expressions.
http://selfguru.sourceforge.net/
InfoGalactic: Self (programming language)
The wiki-based resource presents a profile of the Self programming language, including its design goals, designers, and early development, along with a description of its basic syntax, use of objects, inheritance and delegation, traits, and slots, as well as it environment, such as performance, garbage collection, and optimizations. External links to related references and reading resources are included.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Self_(programming_language)
The official site for the programming language features downloads for the Mac OS X and Linux platforms, as well as the Self Handbook, the main set of documentation for the language. The text of academic papers and talks on the programming language are published, along with informational videos, development notes, and an overview of the language. Links to the Self Yahoo Group and other Self resources are included.
http://www.selflanguage.org/
Self is a pure object-oriented programming language, in which all activities in a computer system are carried out by a set of communicating objects. A profile of the language, its creation, goals, and development, are put forth, along with details of its implementations, installation instructions, and downloads for the code to run Self on Windows, Linux, or on Smalltalk. Acknowledgments and links to other Self resources online are included.
http://self-support.com/
Yahoo Groups: Self Programming Language
Using the venue of Yahoo Groups, this list is for the discussion of the open-source Self object-oriented programming language, originally developed at Stanford University and Sun Microsystems. Membership in the group does not require approval, and all members can post messages. Established in 1998, messages can be read by year and by month. Topics include all aspects of Self programming, Self coding questions, and community support.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/self-interest/info
