Self - Wednesday 28th July 2021

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The next meeting of the UK Smalltalk User Group will be on Wednesday, July 30th.

Russell Allen will talk to us about 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.

Given the current COVID-19 restrictions, this will be an online meeting from home. Please note that the meeting will start later than usual, to accomodate the speaker who will connect from Australia.

If you'd like to join us, please sign up in advance on the meeting's Meetup page to receive the meeting details. Don’t forget to bring your laptop and drinks!

Update 1 January 2025: The recording of the presentation is now available on YouTube:

 

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