Russell Allen - Self

Dating back to the late 1980s, Self is a prototype based programming language and environment in the broader Smalltalk family. Although Self has always been a niche research system, its influence can still be seen in areas as diverse as the fast VMs of Java and Javascript, in the prototype semantics of Javascript, and in the Morphic user interface used by Squeak, Pharo and Cuis.

Russell Allen has a background in law and computers and first came across Self in the late 1990s. Around 2008 he helped get Self running on Linux x86, set up the Self website and GitHub account, and for the last decade or so he has been helping keep Self as a project alive.

In this talk, Russell will demonstrate Self as a running system, including the object semantics, language, and the multi-user Morphic development environment. he’ll talk about the current status of the project and the challenges it faces for the future.

Please note: the presentation will start later than usual, to accomodate the speaker who will be connecting from Australia.