Some here already know that the Prototype is one of the GOF's Creational
patterns. It's potentcy goes far beyond GUI development. As the object
paradigm becomes more and more pervasive, object-oriented software systems
have become more dependent upon object compostition than class inheritance.
The impulse for this shift stems from important knowledge representation and
cognitive issues regarding how we categorize information about the world
around us. The Prototype pattern provides flexibility in the creation of
objects. Java and C++ use another Creational pattern - the Factory to provide
flexiblity, but nothing beats a Prototype for flexiblity.

-Laurence

wirth at almaden.ibm.com wrote:

> "Alejandro F. Reimondo" <aleReimondo at sugarweb.com> wrote:
> > Parts for Smalltalk works connecting objects with links.
> > The objects can be visual (GUI) objects or non-visual.
> > You can save your work in aFile with the component,
> >   later you can use the component (loaded from file).
> > You can connect the parts with point & drag; but if you want to, you can
> write
> >  a new method for any object. The method will be bound to the object (not
> to
> >  its class) to expand the part or to implement a more convenient message
> >  in the context where the part is been used.
> What we're getting into here is the advantage of instance-methods, or more
> radically, prototype object models, for dynamic GUI building environments.
> A couple interesting examples of such systems include:
>
> * Amulet, done by Brad Myers' group at CMU, in which they implemented a
> prototype object model on top of C++(!):
>
> http://www.cs.cmu.edu:80/afs/cs/project/amulet/www/amulet-overview.html
>
> *SK8, done at Apple (a project with which I was associated for awhile),
> with a prototype object model implemented on top of Lisp:
>      http://sk8.research.apple.com/        <--- Sigh... this link appears
> to be dead.
>
> *NewtonScript, a relative of Self, with a really funky
> inheritance/containment model.
>
> *Hmm... I bet we can consider Cocoa (now Stagecast) to be built with
> prototypes, too :-)
>      http://www.stagecast.com/
>
> Mike Wirth