Description
A COLA is designed to be the simplest possible language which can be described in itself, so that the implementation exactly describes itself. In order to do this the structure of the environment is separated from the semantics of the computation performed.
The object system describes the structure of a prototype-based Object Oriented environment. This is implemented in terms of objects and message passing, which is in fact the same system it is describing. This allows modification of the system by using the same object oriented knowledge used to write any other application.
This object system is turned into a useful programming language by complementing it with a functional language describing what each object's methods do. The methods called from the object language are closures running a functional programming language.
Combined together, these two parts form a complete prototype-based Object Oriented programming language which is entirely self-hosting.
Read more about this topic: COLA (software Architecture)
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)