Self: The Movie;

Jecel Assumpção Jr
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2013–2024
YouTube
21K views · 13 years ago · demo · intermediate · historical

Self: The Movie, a promotional film for the Self programming language and environment from Sun Microsystems. It shows the Morphic-style direct manipulation interface where graphical objects are programmable, live and can be inspected and rearranged on screen.

HN people recommend it as a vivid demonstration of programming and graphics woven together in a tangible, directly manipulable environment.

“it shows that programming and graphics can be much more closely interwoven than we're used to”
Tools for thought & programming UXInteraction design
#selflanguage#morphic#directmanipulation#liveprogramming#sunmicrosystems#tangibleui

13 comments from Hacker News

s
@sillysaurusx2020 · in “Organizing Programs Without Classes (1991) [pdf]”
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.
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n
@nerdponx2019 · in “Self Programming Language”
This was a fun watch: ▶ this video
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F
@Fr0styMatt882016 · in “In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)”
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.
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z
@zura2016 · in “Self: The Movie”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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p
@pjmlp2014 · in “Shadow DOM”
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
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t
@throwaway3442013 · in “Self Programming Language”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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j
@jecel2024 · in “Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas”
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.
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t
@trashburger2023 · in “Ambient Co-Presence”
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
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a
@andai2021 · in “Julia and the Reincarnation of Lisp (2020)”
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
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z
@zaiste2020 · in “Show HN: Kretes – Build full-stack applications in TypeScript and PostgreSQL”
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
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z
@zaiste2020 · in “Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?”
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
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t
@ticking2015 · in “Chris Granger on the LightTable architecture”
They didn't contain much of the live programming story? ▶ this video link
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