Editing Self (programming language) (section)

=== Delegation ===
{{main|Delegation (object-oriented programming)}}
In theory, every Self object is a stand-alone entity. Self has neither classes nor meta-classes. Changes to a particular object do not affect any other, but in some cases it is desirable if they did. Normally an object can understand only messages corresponding to its local slots, but by having one or more slots indicating ''parent'' objects, an object can '''delegate''' any message it does not understand itself to the parent object. Any slot can be made a parent pointer by adding an asterisk as a suffix. In this way Self handles duties that would use [[inheritance (object-oriented programming)|inheritance]] in class-based languages. Delegation can also be used to implement features such as [[namespace]]s and [[lexical scoping]].

For example, suppose an object is defined called "bank account", that is used in a simple bookkeeping application. Usually, this object would be created with the methods inside, perhaps "deposit" and "withdraw", and any data slots needed by them. This is a prototype, which is only special in the way it is used since it also happens to be a fully functional bank account.