--- stéphane_ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> Sorry but this book is not really good. ...

Hi Stephane,

Which book are you referring to here? 

This is a curiosity question and not an argumentative
question.... I liked some books, e.g., the White book
and Korienek et al., because the get you into things
in a hurry. On the downside, one doesn't get into
anything very deep... They are good to build the
confidence in manipulating things in the environment.

The white and the blue book also present
'motivational' material on some of the multimedia
aspects that pull a lot of people into Squeak. I for
one get a little frustrated with that material. There
is not that much on actual coding and Squeak is a
moving target. 

Frankly, I appreciate all of the efforts one way or
another...writing a book or large report is not an
easy undertaking. There is the devil in the details.
Still I've not seen the Smalltalk equivalent of
Winston and Horn's 'LISP or Anderson et al. 'Essential
Lisp'. One notable characteristic of both of these
books is the use of 'projects' of significant use and
intellectual content to demonstrate core elements of
the language. Hmmm, I'm back to my 'projects' comments
from last year--I've not made much progress, life gets
into the way of coding. I've not given up though :o)

Another characteristic is a nice balance between
explanation and brevity. The authors explain what,why,
and how but never stray to far from code. Staying in
my momentary 'lisp' context, contrast the two
mentioned books to Abelson et al. 'Structure...'. I've
always admired the book but as an imperfect
practitioner, I have found it of much less use. It is
too difficult to jump-start my ideas from that
platform. This, of course reflects much more on me,
the reader, than it does the book. Nevertheless, the
net result is a recommendation of Lisp and Essential
Lisp over Structure.

I think that Smalltalk--and even the rapidly evolving
Squeak--can be approached in the same way that LISP is
approached in the Winston and Anderson books. It
requires discipline to stay with making substantive
projects while working within a core of the language,
i.e. making something with intellectual depth while
resisting wonderful, but fringe capabilities present
in the language. 

Regards,
Mike

P.S. I not comparing Lisp to Smalltalk here. I am
noting an art in Lisp books and thinking how it MIGHT
provide some insight to an aspiring Squeak
author--book, web, etc. 

P.P.S. It is interesting how Winston has taken a
completely different approach (compared to LISP) in
his 'On to Smalktalk' and 'On to C++' books. I do like
the brevity of the presentations--while maintaining
overall breadth. But that is a matter of personal
taste. more :o) More than once the idea of an 'On to
Squeak', perhaps with a different but similar title,
has occurred to me. 

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