Conrad Taylor wrote:
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Lawson English <lenglish5@cox.net mailto:lenglish5@cox.net> wrote:
Steve Wessels wrote: That's right. Smalltalk hasn't died. I am fortunate enough to be part of a team developing financial software for many years using Smalltalk. People have predicted Smalltalk's death about as often as Apple's death. I think comparisons between Smalltalk and Java have to take marketing into account. Paying Smalltalk work is harder to find. Here's an interesting twist. Companies looking for skilled Object Oriented developers, if they understand what they need, will seek programmers with Smalltalk experience. Speaking as a long-term script kiddie who likes to collect languages, I can tell you that the main reason(s) why *I* find Smalltalk difficult to use involve(s): lack of documentation, lack of well-documented example code, lack of compsci teaching materials written with Smalltalk for the example code, etc. Notice a trend?
When I first encountered Smalltalk, it was through the course material for CS 497 and Ralph Johnson was the instructor. It was an intermediate undergraduate and graduate course on object oriented programming (OOP). Thus, it wasn't a course for the entry level computer science student but it should have been because I learned more in this course than any of my other computer science courses. The course used the following textbooks:
Design Patterns by Ralph Johnson et al Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns by Kent Beck Design Patterns: The Smalltalk Companion by Alpert et al (optional but well worth it)
I tried to find that course. The video links still exist, but the videos themselves seem to be offline.
Darn.
Lawson