Prototype and Actor Languages

In the last chapter, I introduced some of the fundamental concepts of classbased programming languages. The task of this chapter is to introduce two competing paradigms that are closely related to each other: prototype and Actor languages. Historically, prototype languages developed out of the concepts of Actor languages, but they will be considered in the reverse order because prototype-based languages are now an area of active research while Actors tend to be somewhat (unfairly, in our view) neglected.