What is Newspeak?

Newspeak is a new programming language in the tradition of Self and Smalltalk. Newspeak is highly dynamic and reflective  - but designed to support modularity and security. It supports both object-oriented and functional programming.

Like Self, Newspeak is message-based; all names are dynamically bound. However, like Smalltalk, Newspeak uses classes rather than prototypes. As in Beta, classes may nest. Because class names are late bound, all classes are virtual, every class can act as a mixin, and class hierarchy inheritance falls out automatically. Top level classes are essentially self contained parametric namespaces, and serve to define component style modules, which naturally define sandboxes in an object-capability style. Newspeak was deliberately designed as a principled dynamically typed language. We plan to evolve the language to support pluggable types.

For more information about Newspeak, please see the Newspeak Programming Language website.

Last updated February 4th, 2024

Copyright Gilad Bracha 2008-2024