By coincidence, a colleague handed me a copy of
    Smalltalk with Style
    Suzanne Skulics, Edward J. Klimas, David A. Thomas
    Prentice Hall 1996,
    IBSN 0-13-165549-3 (128 pages).

I guess pretty much everyone reading this list has met this book,
but I hadn't, and neither, I guess, has Niko Schwarz <niko.schwarz at gmx.net>
whose recent messages made me think about some style issues.

I'm a knocker.  I really like showing how a book written by some Big Names
is full of holes.  (You should hear me about Sedgewick's "Algorithms" book.
All this time and his C is _still_ dreadful.)

I could only find one thing to knock in this book, and that is their
repeated suggestion on page 21 that it is OK to write 3.14159 instead
of Float pi.  It isn't.  You will find your trig calculations going
seriously astray if you use a value for pi which is that much different
from the value used by your library.

But that's IT.  Everything else on that page, and on the other 127-odd
pages, is excellent.

By now I have either figured most of this out for myself, learned on this
list, or learned it from papers I've read that have been suggested on this
list.  But for anyone beginning Smalltalk, this would make a really
wonderful second book.

For anyone who's reasonably experienced with Smalltalk, it's STILL worth
reading this book.  You might learn something.  Even if you don't end up
agreeing with their recommendations, you'll probably learn something from
arguing with the authors in your head.

Gosh, it feels weird praising something like that.