Slashdot Mirror
The Slate Programming Language
An anonymous reader writes "I know that we have had an influx of new programming languages of late, but I feel that this one merits special attention. Theoretical computer scientists and long-time Squeak and LISP contributors Brian Rice and Lee Salzman have been rapidly developing a language called Slate. It draws on the various strengths of the Self, Smalltalk, and LISP languages. To quote from the website: 'Slate is a prototype-based object-oriented programming language based on Self, CLOS, and Smalltalk. Slate syntax is intended to be as familiar as possible to a Smalltalker, rather than engaging in divergent experiments in that respect.' The beta release is currently being written in Common LISP."
i think smalltalk++ would be a better approach than inventing a new language. Look at C++: it's backwards compatable with C, so a C coder is already a C++ coder and can slowly start making use of new C++ features.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Slate is a prototype-based object-oriented programming language based on Self, CLOS, and Smalltalk.
From a recent post:
Prothon is a new industrial-strength, interpreted, prototype-based, object-oriented language that gets rid of classes altogether in the way that the Self language does.
Does this point to a trend in language design?
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Who gives a shit about the real world. None of the tools you cubicle-dwelling corporate serfs love so much ever came from the real world. All your programming tools come from research labs -- mere leftovers thrown away by academics once they grow bored of playing with them.
You code monkeys are nothing but low-skilled craftsmen, so when real scientists speak, please sit down and shut up, mkay?
Thats MY nick..... So, they're saying I'm a smalltalker with a lisp?
:(
Shhhtop it!
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
In the third case you might find out that you can get by with a set of "prototype" objects to copy from and you don't need classes at all. But to actually eliminate classes you will have to find solutions to the other things they do for you like hold the behaviors for the objects (you can put them in the objects themselves, for example) and reflection (Self uses special "mirror objects" for that).
There are several different styles of prototype based languages.
I don't know much about Slate, or Smalltalk, or anything, for that matter, but a quick look at the article shows that both of your "confusing" examples are not that confusing...
As someone else already pointed out, "3 + 4 * 5" ==> 35 (not 23) because Slate has no differences in binary operator precedence and therefore always associates to the left.
And as for "(3/4) == (3/4)" ==> false, this is because "==" tests for _object_ equality, and the two different instances of "(3/4)", while representing the same numerical value, are distinct objects. It appears that "=" tests for numerical equality.
This new Slate language looks just like Smalltalk only with new features that nobody actually wants, such as prototypes instead of classes. AFAICT, it hasn't improved on any of the above problems and has actually made some of them worse. IOW, it's doomed.
Scallscript is a start. It's definitely the best of the breed. Personally, I think the greatest barrier to acceptance of Slate / Smalltalk / Smallscript / Squeak / Whatever is the language syntax. Programmers just don't yoda talking like, and a slightly-off Germanic style of grammar just doesn't fit well with an activity like programming that is more mathematical and logical than like communication.
This took me by surprise, and I'm not a usual poster here, so I don't have the energy to reply to each person in turn. So I'll summarize some points I've seen:
This post is entirely misleading; we are not researchers, and we do intend to do business based on this language. However, what the language itself is is entirely mis-represented. Note: the original submitter is not affiliated with our project in any way, and in fact does not actually know or use the language.
First, we are not in a project mode of self-promotion or public representation at all. Nothing on that site claims to be a real tutorial, and the current efforts have mostly been about experimentation. We are still preparing the really usable implementation, and have a huge set of ideas and environment enhancements in backlog waiting for this. What's mentioned on the front page is actually a mere fraction of what we're working on.
The project name, "Slate", is short for "Clean Slate Smalltalk". If you don't know Smalltalk, very little of it will make sense; what's at issue is that we mean what Alan Kay would say in that Smalltalk currently means Smalltalk-80, just a certain quirky snapshot of a whole range of ideas that he and others were working on. We're interested in that whole range.
Slate is only about prototypes insofar as this was an initial language stage that was simple to play with and powerful enough to explore without too many limitations. Further revisions of the language will feature higher-level facilities for more type-safe programming and more declarative consistency (declarative in the sense of (re-)defining a class and having its instances track that consistently).
Slate's environment is about 0.001% of completion of what we intend, and we have a huge body of experience and code and ideas to draw upon which are already largely mapped-out. What you see on the site is not representative of what we want in those terms.
The syntax is definitely odd. At issue is the fact that we kept a minimal Smalltalk syntax core and optimized it for "phrase value" and added various annotation mechanisms, which wind up being very hard to understand until you crack open the 40-page programmers' manual which explains this all. Although it is no tutorial, everything is explained there, and improved with feedback from early users.
Slate is eventually going to be a full environment, and be very flexible at a large scale, so that questions of prejudice about design choices will not matter, because we actively take part in designing the system so that users can make the choices: whether image-style live interaction or C-embeddable, highly-optimized, low-overhead, no-IDE deployment. And make it so you can make these choices independently; current Smalltalks, Lisps, Dylan, and hundreds of other languages (especially the more common ones) don't have this.
There are a number of issues brought up here which are addressed but not advertised on the front page; for example, Slate will handle security at the language level, using capability analysis and the subjective programming feature mentioned. Our project has no marketting team (see Smallscript), and has actively avoided public claims until we have the demonstration at-hand. I am giving a presentation and demonstration of the next major release, featuring a self-hosting (C-friendly) setup in Seattle at Smalltalk Solutions 2004 in May.