Brian wrote:

> Can anybody suggest a few good reference books on Smalltalk-80?  I
> program in C++, so I'm familiar with OO concepts.  Plus, I learn better
> by example, so would be greatly interested in references with lots of
> annotated examples.
>
> As much as I'd love to actually *use* Squeak, I've simply not been able
> to find any tutorials on the Web which give me enough information to do
> any type of real programming.
>
> Thanks...
>
>   --Brian
>
> --
> ----------------------
> --Brian Koontz      --
> --Routech, Inc.     --
> --briank at routech.com--
> ----------------------

  I'm a Smalltalk newbie myself. One excellent tutorial is to download
Smalltalk Express and the accompanying PDF doc from
http://www.objectshare.com.
It's a freebie and will give you a decent introduction. (Windoze only)
Granted it's not
Squeak but I've found it helpful and has added to my understanding of
the
Smalltalk environment. (Coming from a write source/compile it/ run it
practice myself.) Since going through it I can now find my way around
the
Squeak environment without much trouble. Be warned though that there are
class & syntactic differences between the objectshare stuff and Squeak.
But
nothing too scary.

On the dead tree list is "Smalltalk and Object Orientation" by John Hunt
(Springer 1997), "On to Smalltalk" by Patrick Henry "shrdlu" Winston
(Addison Wesley 1998) and the "purple book "Smalltalk-80" by Adele
Goldberg
& David Robinson. (Addison Wesley 1989). (Interesting that there are so
many new titles on Smalltalk lately...hmmmm?)

This "purple book" is required reading for Squeak.
The Winston book has a great format with each chapter titled 'How to <do
whatever>'.  The Hunt book is one long tutorial, relating object
orientation from a Smalltalk perspective, and more detailed than the
Smalltalk Express tutorial.

One thing I know for sure is that when I'm on the job I find myself
wishing
that the programming environment was more like Smalltalk. I'd get twice
as
much done and be 1/10th as frustrated.

H.E. Fassl
hefassl at mcs.net