4 ms·

Prototype Based Programming Languages

46 points by fogus 17y ago

mahmud 17y ago
How can I take this seriously when it forgets to mention Omega? the pretties little thing with prototypes. http://www.pervasive.jku.at/About_Us/Staff/Blaschek/Omega/_Report/Introduction.html http://www.pervasive.jku.at/About_Us/Staff/Blaschek/Omega/_R... Blaschek's book (one of the hard-cover light blue books from the Monographs of Theoretical Computer Science series) was an absolute delightful win.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  I'd never heard of Omega - it looks like it combines prototypes with optional static typing. I ordered the book, looks very interesting. Thanks! It doesn't mention Lua, either, and Lua is used a lot in e.g. the game industry. It does mention Javascript, albeit as an afterthought. Also, Slate: (http://slatelanguage.org/ http://slatelanguage.org/) (Never used it, though.) I'm glad to see mainstream interest in prototype-based OO building.
  - doublec 17y ago
    I planned to go into more detail in JavaScript since it's probably the most widely used prototype based language. But the article was getting long so I left the brief mention and maybe revisit it later to compare how the limitations of only one immutable prototype slot affect usage. It's one of the reasons I left doing the examples 'as an exercise for the reader' to see how other people approach the examples given before I gave my approach.
    - silentbicycle 17y ago
      No problem. It's a good article, and prototypes are deep waters. There will always be more things you could have covered. :)
    - IsaacSchlueter 17y ago
      probably the most widely used prototype based language Not probably. It's arguably the most used programming language, period. That being said, I'm kind of glad that you didn't go into much detail about it. There's a lot of Javascript info online, and I'm more curious about the other languages you tackled. It'll be interesting to see if there are any responses that focus on applying some of the benefits of other prototype languages to Javascript development.
- doublec 17y ago
  I only have so much time to write - I didn't mention Cecil either :-) Thanks for the Omega pointer.
  - mahmud 17y ago
    Chris, good to see you around. Your tutorials introduced me both to Dylan and Corman Common Lisp :-)
protomyth 17y ago
NewtonScript was another great prototype-based OO language with a good persistent storage mechanism (soups). The UI was quite interesting.
ajross 17y ago
Prototypes are a huge win not just for language expressiveness, but for interpreter implementation too. My language, Nasal (http://plausible.org/nasal http://plausible.org/nasal) uses the same tricks to implement "objects", "classes" and "modules" in script code using precisely the same internal mechanics.
wlievens 17y ago
I did my master's thesis on symbiosis between prototype OO and class-based OO models in an interpreter scenario. The objects would be exposed in both directions so that you could use objects from the host language (Smalltalk) in the hosted language (a toy language developed at the university), and the other way around. Pretty interesting stuff.

46 points by fogus 17y ago

How can I take this seriously when it forgets to mention Omega? the pretties little thing with prototypes. http://www.pervasive.jku.at/About_Us/Staff/Blaschek/Omega/_Report/Introduction.html http://www.pervasive.jku.at/About_Us/Staff/Blaschek/Omega/_R... Blaschek's book (one of the hard-cover light blue books from the Monographs of Theoretical Computer Science series) was an absolute delightful win.

silentbicycle 17y ago
I'd never heard of Omega - it looks like it combines prototypes with optional static typing. I ordered the book, looks very interesting. Thanks! It doesn't mention Lua, either, and Lua is used a lot in e.g. the game industry. It does mention Javascript, albeit as an afterthought. Also, Slate: (http://slatelanguage.org/ http://slatelanguage.org/) (Never used it, though.) I'm glad to see mainstream interest in prototype-based OO building.
- doublec 17y ago
  I planned to go into more detail in JavaScript since it's probably the most widely used prototype based language. But the article was getting long so I left the brief mention and maybe revisit it later to compare how the limitations of only one immutable prototype slot affect usage. It's one of the reasons I left doing the examples 'as an exercise for the reader' to see how other people approach the examples given before I gave my approach.
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    No problem. It's a good article, and prototypes are deep waters. There will always be more things you could have covered. :)
  - IsaacSchlueter 17y ago
    probably the most widely used prototype based language Not probably. It's arguably the most used programming language, period. That being said, I'm kind of glad that you didn't go into much detail about it. There's a lot of Javascript info online, and I'm more curious about the other languages you tackled. It'll be interesting to see if there are any responses that focus on applying some of the benefits of other prototype languages to Javascript development.
doublec 17y ago
I only have so much time to write - I didn't mention Cecil either :-) Thanks for the Omega pointer.
- mahmud 17y ago
  Chris, good to see you around. Your tutorials introduced me both to Dylan and Corman Common Lisp :-)

protomyth 17y ago

NewtonScript was another great prototype-based OO language with a good persistent storage mechanism (soups). The UI was quite interesting.

ajross 17y ago

Prototypes are a huge win not just for language expressiveness, but for interpreter implementation too. My language, Nasal (http://plausible.org/nasal http://plausible.org/nasal) uses the same tricks to implement "objects", "classes" and "modules" in script code using precisely the same internal mechanics.

wlievens 17y ago

I did my master's thesis on symbiosis between prototype OO and class-based OO models in an interpreter scenario. The objects would be exposed in both directions so that you could use objects from the host language (Smalltalk) in the hosted language (a toy language developed at the university), and the other way around. Pretty interesting stuff.