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Self and Self: Whys and Wherefores

Stanford

2.2M subscribers • 18 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 4 people: 3 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2010 to 2022.
  • Presented by David Ungar

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

29K views16 years ago4 recommendations

Programming languagesHistory and cultureLanguage design and type systemsHistory of computingObject-oriented design

David Ungar discusses the history, philosophy, successes, and failures of the prototype-based Self programming language.

(September 30, 2009) David Unger, from IBM Research, discusses how his experience in computer science has led him to the conclusion that even if your ideas succeed, the real legacy is the people. Stanford University: stanford.edu/ Stanford Engineering Everywhere: see.stanford.edu/ Stanford University Channel on YouTube: youtube.com/stanford

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its fascinating insights into programming language design and the history of Self.

mark_hon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Self language still alive - new release for Linux, Mac”

David Unger gave a great talk recently on this: link to this video (recorded at Stanford, but it's a reprise of his acceptance speech on receiving the Dahl-Nygaard award from memory) He has a role-call at the end of what the people involved in the self project went on to do afterwards, and it's staggering: some of the engineers of the original Google architecture, what became Hotspot as you say, Lars Bak (of Chrome V8) as someone else has pointed out... just an amazing list.
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sbon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The status of the Self language”

To get a feeling for the Self language and what was (is) possible, you should (if you can, of course) take the time to watch the video: link to this video It contains a few gems, and is really worthwhile watching. (Disclaimer, I think Dave Ungar has done tremendous things for PLDI; interested people should definitely check out his UC-Berkeley PhD thesis of 1986, easily one of the best I have ever seen...)
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rileyphoneon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Lisp, Smalltalk, and the power of symmetry (2014)”

…one curious, I recommend this talk 0 by David Ungar, one of Self's creators, that explains the history, philosophy, successes, and failures of the Self project. It's a shame more didn't get done with it (though V8, arguably the most important language runtime, is very similar). Someone has even been making a Zig version of Self recently 1. 0 link to this video 1 link…
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calvinon Lobsters • Recommends

Self and Self: Whys and Wherefores (2009)
2View on Lobsters

DonHopkinson Hacker News • Mentions

On “The influence of Self”

Self and Self: Whys and Wherefores (September 30, 2009) David Unger, from IBM Research, discusses how his experience in computer science has led him to the conclusion that even if your ideas succeed, the real legacy is the people. link to this video
View on Hacker News

hayley-pattonon Hacker News • Mentions

On “An Efficient Implementation of SELF (1989) [pdf]”

0 is Self and Self: Whys and Wherefores < link to this video > > And at the time, we thought it was impossible to make this language run efficiently, because it did all these things that were more abstract than languages of the time ...
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