[cap-talk] Re: All we need is better documentation?

[Norman Hardy]

On May 12, 2004, at 4:26 PM, David Hopwood wrote:

> Norman Hardy wrote:
>> The Actors computer language is the simplest model I know of that 
>> implicitly displays capability concepts.
>
> Was there a language called "Actors"? There were certainly the 
> languages
> "Act1", "Act2" and "Act3", and various others that followed the actor 
> model,
> but none called "Actors" AFAIK. See 
> <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ActorsLanguage>.

I agree. I was being sloppy. Thanks for the pointer.
Actors is important as an example of a minimalist model that captures 
the spirit of capabilities.
Scheme and Smalltalk are also exemplary but much more complex.
Smalltalk bottoms out in a way that violates capability security but I 
don't know the details.
The  much more complex Java language (but not the libraries) are good 
except the class model makes too many decisions for you and static 
class variables violate capabilities. Two instances of the same class 
should not be able to communicate unless introduced.