Announcing Self Release 2.0

[Ole.Agesen@Eng.Sun.COM (Ole Agesen)]

Announcing Self Release 2.0

The Self Group at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc., and Stanford
University is pleased to announce Release 2.0 of the experimental
object-oriented exploratory programming language Self.

Release 2.0 introduces full source-level debugging of optimized code,
adaptive optimization to shorten compile pauses, lightweight threads
within Self, support for dynamically linking foreign functions,
changing programs within Self, and the ability to run the experimental
Self graphical browser under OpenWindows.

Designed for expressive power and malleability, Self combines a pure,
prototype-based object model with uniform access to state and
behavior. Unlike other languages, Self allows objects to inherit state
and to change their patterns of inheritance dynamically. Self's
customizing compiler can generate very efficient code compared to
other dynamically-typed object-oriented languages.

Self Release 2.0 runs on Sun-3's and Sun-4's, but no longer has an
optimizing compiler for the Sun-3 (and therefore runs slower on the
Sun-3 than previous releases).

This release is available free of charge and can be obtained via
anonymous ftp from self.stanford.edu. Unlike previous releases,
Release 2.0 includes all source code and is legally unencumbered (see
the LICENSE file for legal information.)  Also available for ftp are a
number of papers published about Self.

Finally, there is a mail group for those interested in random
ramblings about Self, self-interest@self.stanford.edu. Send mail to
self-request@self.stanford.edu to be added to it (please do not send
such requests to the mailing list itself!).

The Self Group  at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc.
	       and Stanford University