It seems like a lot of Proto languages are coming out here in 2004.
This new one http://slate.tunes.org/, called Slate keeps it’s syntax much more aligned with Self.
Where did all these language writers come from? When I was on the Self mailing list (search for self-interest at Yahoo Groups/eGroups), very few people were interested in this stuff.
At any rate, I wish the guys well, but they will find that the learning curve for most programmers is going to be extremely high for this language. You really need to have some sort of special niche to do well. For example, Lua still looks good to game programmers and really small systems. Ditto for Forth. Python and Perl take the vast majority of the mainstream typefree languages with their excellent cross-platform support and polish.
So the message is, get a niche. Otherwise, the syntax hump is going to be too high for most people, and the language will languish in obscurity.