Category:Smalltalk: Difference between revisions

Smalltalk-80 is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for Constructivist teaching, at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, Adele Goldberg, and others during the 1970s, influenced by Sketchpad and Simula.

The language was generally released as Smalltalk-80 and has been widely used since. Smalltalk-like languages are in continuing active development, and has gathered a loyal community of users around it.

Smalltalk-80 is a fully reflective system, implemented in itself. Smalltalk-80 provides both structural and computational reflection. Smalltalk is a structurally reflective system whose structure is defined by Smalltalk-80 objects. The classes and methods that define the system are themselves objects and fully part of the system that they help define. The Smalltalk compiler compiles textual source code into method objects, typically instances of CompiledMethod. These get added to classes by storing them in a class's method dictionary. The part of the class hierarchy that defines classes can add new classes to the system. The system is extended by running Smalltalk-80 code that creates or redefines classes and methods. In this way a Smalltalk-80 system is a "living" system, carrying around the ability to extend itself at run-time.

Citations

• Wikipedia:Smalltalk