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:
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“An intentional object is given by a word or a phrase which gives a description under which.”
—Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919)