Where did the Self language get its name?

Question

Why was the language given such a hard to google name?

You think "Self" is hard-to-Google? How about "C"?!? (Although to be fair, 3 of the first 10 Google hits for "C" are about the language, while only two of the top 10 Google hits for "Self" are about the language. YMMV :-). — Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні, Mar 24 '11 at 17:20

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 18 '11 at 09:26

From here:

It is called 'SELF' because Dr David Ungar got called to many many nerd lecturers and got sick of writing his name on his name badge and just wrote 'Self' instead. SELF is a good name for it as it automatically assumes default self method calls for automatic inheritance.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 18 '11 at 12:29

Yep, Dogbane is right. And it really is a hard to google name so i use "self language" in quotes.

Dave Ungar told the story himself in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ka4KY7TMTU Very interesting: he talks about the design principles behind Self.

Where did the Self language get its name?

2 Answers2