At 9:26 +0000 2/16/2000, Stefan Elisa Kapusniak wrote:
>In edu.uiuc.cs.squeak, Dan Ingalls <Dan.Ingalls at disney.com> wrote:
>
>>Yes.  We refer to this as "implicit self".  Alan is the strongest
>>proponent of this appraoch in our group, actually, and SELF works
>>this way as well.  We seriously considered this also back in ST-74 (!).
>>The two things that have prevented enthusiastic adoption of this
>>approach are...
>
>   I have a nagging notion that part of the problem here
>   may be that "self" shouldn't have the name "self". I
>   think I'd feel better if it were "thisObject" or
>   something.  "self" really indicates me, myself, sitting
>   here at the keyboard typing this email.  I suspect
>   non-programmers find the overloading of the word a
>   bit confusing.
>
>   It's sort of like having to pretend you're the object
>   to work out what's going on or what to say.  I think
>   this might act as a hurdle -- tho' I don't have any
>   evidence of it.

I've found it effective to talk about pretending one is an object and viewing the world from that perspective. It's makes the programming model far less abstract in a new user's first encounters.

I think most people like to play games where 'self' is 'me' and self is hitting the volley ball, or picking a self in a role modeling game.

Pretending to be something or somebody else is a game we play from childhood and to the extent the word 'self' aids in this, I think it is goodness.

Besides, after a while, self becomes just another object.

Dave
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David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, NY
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