Unlike most scripting systems we profile, Simkin does not collect garbage or automate reference counting. Simkin inventor Simon Whiteside minimizes runtime overhead and enhances Simkin's realtime predictability by exposing memory management as the developer's responsibility. Simkin's Java flavor has several interesting features. It is intended that each Java class has associated with it an XML file which defines additional data and functionality. For technical reasons, Simkin's Java form doesn't yet expose Java methods as elegantly as the BeanShell implementation does.
Slate borrows recognizable features from at least a dozen languages.
To a developer, it feels like Smalltalk because it's fully object-oriented, highly interactive, and manifested as a total working environment, rather than an isolated language processor. A Slate working environment is readily customizable, in that new languages are available through sophisticated parsing objects. While it does interesting things on the project team's computers, it's hard to develop practical new applications with it. Slate appears to be at about the point Linux was in early 1992, or perhaps more precisely, where Hurd is now. On the other hand, Slate has achieved interesting milestones in the year 2000, and will interest those who want to be part of the future of computing language design and use.