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> but JavaScript totally missed the boat on efficient compile-ability, which is the most interesting thing about Self

That's making much use of hindsight though: the creators of Self didn't think it would run fast, until it did [0]. The HOPL paper on Self [1] spends many words recounting the challenge of making Self fast.

[0] This is arguably a stronger claim than what appears in HOPL; I think it's from a talk by Dave Ungar, I'd have to check.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1238844.1238853

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hayley-patton|4 months ago

[0] is Self and Self: Whys and Wherefores <https://youtu.be/3ka4KY7TMTU?si=Js_oG3MneCxBtEql&t=2378>

> And at the time, we thought it was impossible to make this language run efficiently, because it did all these things that were more abstract than languages of the time ...