motivation
focused on expressiveness through simplicity
programming for operating systems
speed execution
no virtual machine
software engineering
pure
minimal syntax
all values are objects
prototype-based object model
everything is a message
dynamic
all messages are dynamic
code is a runtime modifiable tree
delayed evaluation block
differential inheritance
dynamic and multiple inheritance
security
strong type
design by contract
genericity
accessible
small
embeddable
open source
inspiration
self
smallTalk
Eiffel
C (for hardware support)