ducasse [ducasse at iam.unibe.ch] wrote
> java at fiberia.com wrote:
> > bought squeak: trip to objectland book. big mistake. book
> > has lots of typos & mistakes. stuck on first exercise.

Haven't noticed any typos but having the first example or two 
not work can be a bit disconcerting.

Don't the authors provide e-mail addresses ? If not... Hmm... a 
google search will eventual lead you to e-mail addresses for at 
least two of the authors. And the third seems to work for/with 
the other two in Oregon.

> > book mentions corrections on addison-wesley website.
> > unable to find such a page on website. anyone have any
> > clues on what next?

Hmm.... looks like they (Addison-Wesley) needs to get their
act together. They seem to have two different web sites for this book:

http://www.aw.com/catalog/academic/product/1,4096,0201731142,00.html
http://cseng.aw.com/book/0,,0201731142,00.html

and not the same content.

> I'm sorry to say that but this book is not interesting. 

For you or for anyone ? I've been reading it to see if it will 
improve my understanding of things Smalltalk & Squeak & I find
a bit light but not offensively so.

> Addison wanted to have a book on Squeak so they redesigned 
> an old book to get a squeak product.

And as we all know, only "new" things are good. :-).

The older, non-Squeak edition seems to get mentioned as a good 
Smalltalk book in a number of places... 

> This book ends up in the category reads once throw away.

I won't quote from the book but words to that effect are actually 
stated somewhere in the introduction/preface to the book 
(which is available on a few web sites for the book).

> and this is a pity because there are so much to show on squeak.

If you read the book the intent ISN'T to turn someone into
a Squeak expert. It is using Squeak/Smalltalk to introduce
object oriented programming concepts. For anyone who has 
been doing things with Smalltalk for a while... well...
it'll probably put them to sleep.

> The price they sold it is also crazy. 

Can't say I'm thrilled with the price of ANY non-Microsoft/Linux 
related programming books "out there" but have assumed (wrongly?)
that this is due to the usual "market forces" for anything
resembling a textbook....


-Andy-