History

Sather is still growing rapidly. The initial Sather compiler (for `Version 0' of the language) was written in Sather (bootstrapped by hand-translating to C) over the summer of 1990. ICSI made the language publicly available (version 0.1) June of 1991. The project has been snowballing since then, with language updates to 0.2 and 0.5, each compiler boot-strapped from the previous. These versions of the language are most indebted to Stephen Omohundro, Chu-Cheow Lim, and Heinz Schmidt. pSather co-evolved with primary early contributions by Jerome Feldman, Chu-Cheow Lim, and Franco Mazzanti. The first pSather compiler was implemented by Chu-cheow Lim on the Sequent Symmetry, workstations and the CM-5.

Sather 1.0 was a major language change, introducing bound routines, iterators, proper separation of typing and code inclusion, contravariant typing, strongly typed parameterization, exceptions, stronger optional runtime checks and a new library design. The 1.0 compiler was a completely fresh effort by Stephen Omohundro and David Stoutamire. It was written in 0.5 with the 1.0 features introduced as they became functional. The 1.0 compiler was first released in the summer of 1994, and Stephen left the project shortly afterwards. The pSather 1.0 design was largely due to Stephan Murer and David Stoutamire.

This document describes Sather 1.1, due to be released September 1995. That compiler is the work of David Stoutamire, Michael Philippsen, Claudio Fleiner, and Boris Weissman. Unlike previous specifications, pSather is now an extension that is part of the 1.1 specification.

A group at the University of Karlsruhe under the direction of Gerhard Goos created a compiler for Sather 0.1. The language their compiler supports, Sather-K, diverged from the ICSI specification when Sather 1.0 was released. Karlsruhe has created a large class library called Karla using Sather-K. More information about Sather-K can be found at http://i44www.info.uni-karlsruhe.de/sather.

Acknowledgements

Sather has adopted ideas from a number of other languages. Its primary debt is to Eiffel, designed by Bertrand Meyer , but it has also been influenced by C, C++, Cecil, CLOS, CLU, Common Lisp, Dylan, ML, Modula-3, Oberon, Objective C, Pascal, SAIL, School, Self, and Smalltalk.

Steve Omohundro was the original driving force behind Sather, keeping the language specification from being pillaged by the unwashed hordes and serving as point man for the Sather community until he left in 1994. Chu-Cheow Lim bootstrapped the original compiler and was largely responsible for the original 0.x compiler and the first implementation of pSather. David Stoutamire took over as language tsar and compiler writer after Stephen left.

Sather has been very much a group effort; many, many other people have been involved in the language design discussions including: Subutai Ahmad, Krste Asanovic, Jonathan Bachrach, David Bailey, Joachim Beer, Jeff Bilmes, Chris Bitmead, Peter Blicher, John Boyland, Matthew Brand, Henry Cejtin, Alex Cozzi, Richard Durbin, Jerry Feldman, Carl Feynman, Claudio Fleiner, Ben Gomes, Gerhard Goos, Robert Griesemer, Hermann Härtig, John Hauser, Ari Huttunen, Roberto Ierusalimschy, Arno Jacobsen, Matt Kennel, Phil Kohn, Franz Kurfess, Franco Mazzanti, Stephan Murer, Michael Philippsen, Thomas Rauber, Steve Renals, Noemi de La Rocque Rodriguez, Hans Rohnert, Heinz Schmidt, Carlo Sequin, Andreas Stolcke, Clemens Szyperski, Martin Trapp, Boris Weissman, and Bob Weiner. Countless others have assisted with practical matters such as porting the compiler and libraries.

Taken from the Sather 1.1. Specification

Last change: 5/31/96
The Sather Team (sather@icsi.berkeley.edu)