The origins of NewtonScript
April 9th, 2008
One of the little “to-do” items in life is some working knowledge of programming. I have no experience, besides basic HTML and CSS, and I’d love to be able to learn a real-life computing language.
While searching, I came across this Wikipedia entry on NewtonScript, the governing language of our good green friend.
Developed from a version of SELF, NewtonScript was designed by Walter Smith, who worked at Apple during the Newton’s heyday. He has a site dedicated to NewtonScript’s story.
Says Smith:
During the development effort that brought you the MessagePad, a new language–now called NewtonScript–evolved in parallel with the view system and object store. The language thrash made it possible: all those languages we looked at provided a wealth of ideas that found their way into NewtonScript. SELF was one of the primary influences.
Check out a great PDF of Smith’s findings here.
I didn’t know this, but according to Wikipedia, “the prototype-based object model of Self and NewtonScript was used in JavaScript, the most popular and visible language to use the concept so far.” I’ll be darned.