next up previous contents index
Next: 1.1 Conventions Up: The Slate Programmer's Reference Previous: List of Figures   Contents   Index

1 Introduction

Slate is a member of the Smalltalk family of languages which supports an object model in a similar prototype-based style as Self[Ungar et al 95], extended and re-shaped to support multiple-dispatch methods. However, unlike Self, Slate does not rely on a literal syntax that combines objects and blocks, using syntax more akin to traditional Smalltalk. Unlike a previous attempt at providing prototype-based languages with multiple dispatch[Chambers 97], Slate is dynamic and more free-form in style, supporting the simplicity and flexibility of syntax and environment of the Smalltalk family. It is intended that both Smalltalk and Self styles of programs can be ported to Slate with minimal effort. Finally, Slate contains extensions including optional keywords, optional type-declarations, subjective dispatch and syntactic macros, that can be used to make existing programs and environment organizations much more powerful than in traditional object-based programming.



Subsections

Brian Rice 2005-11-21