Actor (programming language)
Encyclopedia
The Actor programming language was invented by Charles Duff of The Whitewater Group
in 1988. It was an offshoot of some object-oriented extensions to the Forth language he had been working on.
Actor would be categorized as a pure object-oriented language in the style of Smalltalk
. Like Smalltalk, everything was an object, including small integers. A Baker semi-space garbage collector
was used, along with (in memory-constrained Windows 2.1 days) a software virtual memory system that swapped objects. A token threaded interpreter
, written in 16-bit x86 assembly language, was the execution mechanism for compiled code.
Actor only was released on the Microsoft Windows 2.1 and 3.0 operating system. Actor used perhaps the first pure object-oriented framework over native operating system calls as its basic GUI architecture. This allowed an Actor application to look and feel exactly like a Windows application written in C, but with all the advantages of an interactive Smalltalk-like development environment. Both a downside and upside to this architecture was a tight coupling to the Windows OS architecture, with a thin abstraction layer into objects. This allowed direct use of the rich Windows OS API, but also made it nearly impossible to support any other OS without a significant rewrite of the application framework.
Whitewater Group
Whitewater Group is an Object-oriented software company in the United States. It was acquired by Symantec on June 9, 1992 for US$3.28 million.- Products :...
in 1988. It was an offshoot of some object-oriented extensions to the Forth language he had been working on.
Actor would be categorized as a pure object-oriented language in the style of Smalltalk
Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
. Like Smalltalk, everything was an object, including small integers. A Baker semi-space garbage collector
Garbage collection (computer science)
In computer science, garbage collection is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage, or memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use by the program...
was used, along with (in memory-constrained Windows 2.1 days) a software virtual memory system that swapped objects. A token threaded interpreter
Interpreted language
Interpreted language is a programming language in which programs are 'indirectly' executed by an interpreter program. This can be contrasted with a compiled language which is converted into machine code and then 'directly' executed by the host CPU...
, written in 16-bit x86 assembly language, was the execution mechanism for compiled code.
Actor only was released on the Microsoft Windows 2.1 and 3.0 operating system. Actor used perhaps the first pure object-oriented framework over native operating system calls as its basic GUI architecture. This allowed an Actor application to look and feel exactly like a Windows application written in C, but with all the advantages of an interactive Smalltalk-like development environment. Both a downside and upside to this architecture was a tight coupling to the Windows OS architecture, with a thin abstraction layer into objects. This allowed direct use of the rich Windows OS API, but also made it nearly impossible to support any other OS without a significant rewrite of the application framework.