Slate Language

Derived from SmalltalkLanguage and SelfLanguage, borrows ideas from CommonLispObjectSystem. A couple of its big features are PrototypeBased MultipleDispatch (a trait it shares with CecilLanguage), MacroMessageSends?, SubjectiveDispatch? and SoftTyping.

It's still in a very early stage, but already it shows a lot of promise, and if you're a language geek like me, I highly recommend downloading the latest tarball, reading through the docs and source, and lurking on the #slate channel on FreeNode. -- TimMoore

I like it just for the slogan: "Less talk, more rock." --NickBensema

Anyone have details on how lookup is done?

That's described in LeeSalzman?'s thesis:

The semantics guide is pretty skimpy. And what about that other good stuff like keyword parameter passing?

Smalltalk-style syntax is already very similar to KeywordParameterPassing, even though the order of parameters is fixed. See "Keyword Messages" at .

And does Slate implement a proper message eating Nil, or Smalltalk's exception throwing Nil?

See comments at NullIsBenign for why a "message eating Nil" would be a bad idea.

I find it very interesting that Slate's method definitions look quite a bit like HaskellLanguage's pattern-matching function definitions. Are object-oriented and functional programming converging? Could they by chance be equivalent when developed to the extreme? I already find it very interesting that SmalltalkLanguage and LispLanguage use a lot of the same idioms (using closures as the element of structure). -- MatthiasBenkard?

I have found that object-oriented code that uses TellDontAsk and ImmutableValueObjects? is not very different in style from PurelyFunctional code using monads. The OO code calculates values functionally, because the value objects are immutable, and then pushes calculated values out to other objects through polymorphic interfaces. The monadic functional code calculates values functionally and then pushes calculated values to other monadic computations through lambda abstractions which are therefore polymorphic.

Both functional and OO advocates a few common architectural good practices: --NatPryce


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