Avocado

I’ve been building a Self-like programming environment for JavaScript.

It incorporates a bunch of ideas and principles from Self and Smalltalk, and I’m building it on top of Dan Ingalls’ Lively Kernel. It’s called Avocado. (You win a prize if you can guess the origin of that name.)

I like playing with live objects rather than editing dead text files. I like getting my hands directly on my objects rather than using “tools” to manipulate them. I like prototype-based object systems, though I like classes too. I like computer systems that are designed to fit my brain, rather than to fit the machine or to be easy to write papers about.

So I’m building something like that. And it runs inside a standard web browser.

I’ll have a lot more to say later.