Abyss

Due to a long absence from public availability, these pages are currently going through a major rewrite.

What is Abyss?

Abyss is a concurrent object oriented programming language, suitable for a wide range of applications, and easy to learn.

Abyss operates in an object oriented runtime environment, which in fact consists of Abyss objects. The implementation offers compilation for a virtual architecture, compilation into C source which can then be compiled into the runtime environment, and transparent access to all builtin and compiled in classes. It is being developed by Kris Van Hees.

Some highlights

Some of the features that are present in Abyss are:

Classes can be written in Abyss and in native C.
The entire Abyss system does not distinguish between classes that were written in Abyss or those that are written in C. A native class can inherit from an Abyss class and vice versa. In fact, implementing a class in Abyss first, and then making a native implementation does not require any other classes that use the given class to be changed in any way.
Most of the Abyss system has been implemented as native classes. This show the power of the language, and it makes it easier to work with the source code of the entire system. In addition, it allows for a tighter interaction between user code and system code.

technical information

While alot of the technical documentation is being rewritten to match the latest developments in Abyss, one is currently made available:

The Abyss language specification
Get it in Postscript or in HTML.

Mailing list

A mailing list has been created for discussing various development issues with Abyss. The list is called CaseyD because that was the original name of the runtime system. Click here to access the mailing list.