They had the seed of one. Self did not have the class library and range of functionality of Smalltalk and, more importantly for Sun, it had no user base; at the time that Smalltalk was being touted as the "next COBOL" because of the extent to which is was being used in industry.
There was, from what I have been told, an internal discussion about using Self as the foundation for Java instead of Oak - but the Web, which at the time required apps with very small footprints, became the dominant decision factor. The embedded, portable, VM, characteristics of Oak won out. My memory may wrong here, but I don't think Self had a VM while Smalltalk did. In fact, the Smalltalk VM could read Java bytecode, allowing you to create hybrid apps that intermixed both languages. davew ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
