Fearless extensibility: Smalltalk and object capabilities

Challenge problems Fearless extensibility
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Here’s my submission! Smalltalk and capabilities: a vision of a road not taken for desktop computing (and beyond?) — Terracrypt

I’m still blown away by some of the GUI composition ideas used in early Smalltalk systems, and likewise I’ve been very interested in object-capability security since learning about the Spritely project. The two concepts feel to me like they could fit together very well, and allow for extension points that are both more fine-grained than is usually possible in today’s desktop systems, and likewise more isolated than is usually possible with desktop software.

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Thanks for sharing this capability focused submission! My own thoughts are swirling around capabilities as well, though in a bit of different way, so it would be fun to compare…! We’ll see if I manage to finish a submission in time. :smile:

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Did you ever look at Newspeak? It’s heavily inspired by Smalltalk, and it’s based on an object capability model. I have only taken a superficial look at it, so I can’t say if it conforms to your expectations.

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