[Newbies] Re: I've never written a line of code, but want to be a programmer!

[Tim Johnson]

On Apr 4, 2011, at 5:49 PM, Tim Retz wrote:

> The exception I mentioned above was the "Bots Inc." tutorial. It was
> fantastic, made me think, and I really felt like I was learning. My only
> problem is that is ended too soon. I wish it would go on to show you how to
> build your own systems and, well, just keep going.

Hi Tim,

I like your attitude about programming.  I too like Smalltalk for similar reasons -- you can dive down to the very root of the code and see how things are working, and feel free to break -- er, I mean, replace -- any or all of it.

To get a good feel for what's possible in Squeak and how to do it, some more good recreational reading would be the two original Mark Guzdial Squeak books.  Keep in mind that their examples mainly apply to 2.3-era images.  Also really great to keep up the excitement about "what's possible" IMHO is Smalltalk-80: The Interactive Programming Environment (Goldberg).  This defines the feel of "exploratory" programming IMHO.  Type some code in a Workspace, Do it, see what happens.

When it comes down to actually coding and getting projects done, my favorite books have been: 

- An Introduction to Seaside (Perscheid et al.)
- Smalltalk, Objects and Design (Liu)
- Squeak by Example (Ducasse et al.)

Also one of the Kent Beck books like Smalltalk: Best Practice Patterns but I can't recall if that was the one.  The original 1983 Byte magazine issue all about Smalltalk is also pretty neat.

Have fun,
Tim