Re: Invalid Operating System

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From: Peter da Silva
Subject: Re: Invalid Operating System
Date: 19:04 on 17 Dec 2006
On Dec 17, 2006, at 12:32 PM, A. Pagaltzis wrote:
> * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-12-17 19:05]:
>> On Dec 17, 2006, at 11:08 AM, A. Pagaltzis wrote:
>>> Agreed. After all, it's roughly a cross between Self and
>>> Perl...

>> It's more like a C-styled version of Self, without the
>> Smalltalk/Self dependance on the GUI and snapshots. What of
>> Perl has seeped into it has largely been the stuff that Perl
>> borrowed from languages that sucked less in the first place.

> Objects in JS are synonymous with hash maps and vice versa.

Hash maps are a particular implementation of tagged collections. Twenty 
years ago I'd have called them property lists, because that's what 
they're called in Lisp 1.5. There have been object systems based on 
property lists at least that long... "hash maps" is jargon, an 
implementation detail that shouldn't be exposed in the language.

>  In Self, there is a meta-object protocol; JS doesn't have that.

That's where Self has this dependance on the GUI and snapshots, it's 
reluctant to let go the class model from Smalltalk. Early Self was 
actually more template-like, but they've deprecated creating new 
methods in the language rather than through the GUI even though they 
admit it makes things simpler.

> You might contend that these things come from where Perl borrowed
> them, fine;

I didn't contend that at all, rather I said that the good parts of Perl 
that have seeped into Javascript are primarily the things that Perl 
borrowed from other languages.

> esp. considering Javascript was conceived
> for the browser environment at a time when doing dynamic web
> content meant doing Perl, period.

There was no such time. By the time even the early web came along there 
were hundreds of good scripting languages already in wide use. People 
writing dynamic web scripts in Perl are, and always have been, doing so 
because they preferred to work in Perl. Not because there was any 
reason other languages were any less well suited to the web.

There's stuff above here

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