Self: The Movie; on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2013–2024.
demo · intermediate · evergreen
A 1995 Sun Microsystems film about the Self programming language, a prototype-based Smalltalk relative, showing its live, graphical programming environment.
HN uses it as the canonical demo of Self's integrated, direct-manipulation environment whenever prototypal inheritance or live programming comes up.
“This is a good demo of what could be done in the Self environment”
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Related, and worth a watch: ▶ this video It's a video about the Self language, which I think was designed using the principles in this paper. I like it because (like Oberon) it shows that programming and graphics can be much more closely interwoven than we're used to. They were doing it in the 90's. Then we lost it somewhere along the way by trying to make everything big and user-facing.
in “Organizing Programs Without Classes (1991) [pdf]” · View on HN
I'd point to the work done on tangible UIs and programming environments for that. For example, the work on tangible UIs eg- Self: [link] This is a good demo of what could be done in the Self environment: ▶ this video GUI and non-programmability are tangential things. I don't think they're implicitly bound together.
in “In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)” · View on HN
This reminds me of the "Kansas" environment in the Self programming language. Here is a video about it from Sun in 1995: ▶ this video More interesting search features were added after this video was made.
in “Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas” · View on HN
This existed in the 90s! The Self programming language[0] took Smalltalk's existing visual approach and extended it to be a full visual environment with interactive animations and physical metaphors, giving you a literal "desktop" to work on. Later versions of Self also supported working on a single "world" over the network, where the other users' objects and "hands" (cursors) would be visible to you. Here's an official movie released by Sun Microsystems: ▶ this video [0]: [link]
in “Ambient Co-Presence” · View on HN
I've heard it described as "Scheme in C's clothing." I remember reading something about how that's a misconception, but I can't recall where. On that note, does anyone have any resources or stories about Self? [0] (The language from which JS inherited prototypal inheritance.) [0] ▶ this video
in “Julia and the Reincarnation of Lisp (2020)” · View on HN
I'd like to tightly combine a semi-visual programming editor, the tooling and the runtime/infrastructure into one «thing» as shown in this video [1]. You write a bit of code, you drag and drop another bit, and almost instantly it becomes «online» - the compilation / the deployment process are somehow hidden and the configuration is minimal. It just works, so you can focus on solving the actual business needs of your application - but that's a long term vision... ;) I must mention DarkLang [2] that seems to have a similar goal, but a different approach: Kretes builds on top of VS Code, and uses one of the most popular programming languages while DarkLang builds not only their editor from scratch, but they also introduced a new programming language. I find their project ambitious and inspiring - a potential game changer imho [1]: ▶ this video [2]: [link]
in “Show HN: Kretes – Build full-stack applications in TypeScript and PostgreSQL” · View on HN
I'm creating a Rails/Django equivalent in TypeScript called Huncwot [1]. The project draws inspiration from Self [2] and aims to combine a framework, an editor and infrastructure into a unified programming environment. In other words, I'm on a quest for the Holy Grail of Programming. ;) [1]: [link] [2]: ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?” · View on HN
Self ▶ this video Xerox Star User Interface [link] [link] Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk [link] The Smalltalk-80 Programming System [link] The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer [link] Symbolics Hypertext Document [link] Warren Teitelman work at Xerox PARC [link] The Mesa/Cedar programming environment [link] Steve Jobs internal demo of NeXTSTEP 3, [link] Alan Kay on Xerox PARC work [link] [link] [link]
in “Web Starter Kit” · View on HN
Mainly videos Self ▶ this video Xerox Star User Interface [link] [link] Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk [link] The Smalltalk-80 Programming System [link] The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer [link] Symbolics Hypertext Document [link]
in “Shadow DOM” · View on HN
Here it is on YouTube (Quicktime movie didn't have sound for me). Quality isn't as high, though. ▶ this video
in “Self: the movie” · View on HN