gafisher at sprynet.com wrote:

>As the medium through which most of the world first learned of
>Smalltalk, it was expected that Byte Magazine would mark Smalltalk's
>30th anniversary in some way.
>
<rant>
Byte has stopped being relevant years ago, and this editorial just 
cements that fact.

Martin (the Byte editor) clearly doesn't understand much about 
programming languages. Comments about all variables being pointers 
(hello?), pointing out that Smalltalk doesn't have a regular expression 
facility (thanks God!), etc.
</rant>

No ivory tower here though. Most Java and C++ programmer shouldn't have 
a hard time grasping Smalltalk. Just don't confuse them with exotic 
terminology such as, subject, nouns, messages, etc, but explain that 
it's really very similar:
- Everything is dynamically typed
- Methods just have an interesting syntax, eg x.addTwo(y,z) would be 
written x add: x and: z.
- Integers are objects aswell except that they can be mutated in-place.
- As part of the dynamic typing, the actual method invoked is found with 
a dynamic search, but based on static types. (Java's interface types is 
a static approximation to accomplish the same).
- and show the basic control "structures", such as, ifTrue:ifFalse:, 
whileTrue:, etc.

IHMO of course,

  Tommy