Good, thorough Smalltalk reference

So that I don't have to keep posting queries to this list like the one
I just posted, I was wondering if anybody could recommend a good,
thorough Squeak/Smalltalk language reference.  So far searching online
I've found alot of "The 5 minute intro to Smalltalk" type stuff, but
as these intros becomes less helpful as I try to do more interesting
stuff (after all, you can only add 2 numbers or filter a list so many
times in the Workspace before the "coolness" wears off ;-).  Thanks
alot.

-Rich

On January 15, 2006 21:23, Rich wrote:
> So that I don't have to keep posting queries to this list like the one
> I just posted, I was wondering if anybody could recommend a good,
> thorough Squeak/Smalltalk language reference.  So far searching online
> I've found alot of "The 5 minute intro to Smalltalk" type stuff, but
> as these intros becomes less helpful as I try to do more interesting
> stuff

http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html

is great

(after all, you can only add 2 numbers or filter a list so many
> times in the Workspace before the "coolness" wears off ;-).  Thanks
> alot.
>
> -Rich

Me too. I've yet to find a good reference for all of the standard classes.

I don't need or want tutorials, I just want a thorough reference.

Josh Scholar
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 6:23 PM
Subject: Good, thorough Smalltalk reference


So that I don't have to keep posting queries to this list like the one
I just posted, I was wondering if anybody could recommend a good,
thorough Squeak/Smalltalk language reference.  So far searching online
I've found alot of "The 5 minute intro to Smalltalk" type stuff, but
as these intros becomes less helpful as I try to do more interesting
stuff (after all, you can only add 2 numbers or filter a list so many
times in the Workspace before the "coolness" wears off ;-).  Thanks
alot.

-Rich

Rich wrote:
Rich,

There are lots of good older books out there.  Keep in mind that the UI
(and classes) have changed since these books were written but if mastery
of the language is your chief goal have a look at one of these:

http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html

I read "Smalltalk by Example" when I was first getting started (with
VisualWorks) and it is a good overall Smalltalk book.  Not a reference
however.  I can't say that there really are any reference style
Smalltalk books, maybe the "Smalltalk-80" books come pretty close.  Once
you know the language (short time) and most of the basic classes (longer
time) you can explore the image to find what you need.  If you find a
class that you think will suit your needs then browse references to it
(alt-N or pick "References..." from the context menu).  If you find of
method of interest look at senders and implementers.  Sorry if this
seems obvious but most of us learn the parts of the system we need to
know as we go along...

David

[hidden email] wrote:
> Me too. I've yet to find a good reference for all of the standard classes.
>
> I don't need or want tutorials, I just want a thorough reference.

Maybe the ANSI Smalltalk standard will help you. Note that
most Smalltalks vary somewhat from the standard. I'm not sure
of the status of Squeak's compliance.

> [hidden email] wrote:
>> Me too. I've yet to find a good reference for all of the standard  
>> classes.
>> I don't need or want tutorials, I just want a thorough reference.
It's not possible to have a 'thorough reference' other than the  
system itself. As soon as you add, delete or edit a method - which of  
course happens any time you load a package - it would be out of date  
and no longer thorough.

A static bit of paper or pdf is essentially useless as soon as it is  
written when referring to a dynamic system. You can, certainly, have  
a fairly static description of the *language* Smalltalk since that  
doesn't change much. It would be short and not terribly helpful much  
of the time since you could memorize it in no time. A page or two at  
most, about as long as a list of C precedence rules.

Almost any of the classic Smalltalk books on Stephan's site will have  
a decent level of reasonable-reference material but it will be  
incomplete for the Squeak system. Tough luck I'm afraid. Live with  
it. The only plausible reference is the system as it exists while you  
are examining it.  Any other way involves that quaint old-fashioned  
idiocy so beloved of the java-weenies, C++ chumps and other dinosaurs  
- sourcecode in files. I mean, what an idea. So last century.

What we can have, should have and pretty much don't have is decent  
friggin' comments as to what classes are intended for, how they are  
implemented and their limitations, along with comments in the code to  
give some decent level of meaning. Comments in the system can be (but  
usually aren't) kept up to date. Better yet we could develop tools to  
replace the current browsers that make writing code more like writing  
documentation that has the implementation included as it goes, what  
my friend Dan Lanovaz refers to as a software book.  But then we'd  
get complaints from the sort of plonkers that claim 'oh, my code is  
so clearly written that it needs no comments'. Gits.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: JUM: Jeer at User's Mistake

One nice thing for Smalltalk newbies would be to have a (short)  
tutorial on "how to understand Squeak/Smalltalk without a  
reference".. this would contain all the knowledge an experienced  
Smalltalker uses to understand a new package: how to use senders-of,  
implementors-of, the debugger, etc. to answer questions as they arise.

Don't know if such a beast exists, but if it did it would be a nice  
companion to the traditional (and correct) "the reference is the  
system itself" response..

Andrew

On 15-Jan-06, at 9:51 PM, tim Rowledge wrote:

======================

Andrew Catton
Smallthought Systems Inc.
[hidden email]

Documentation, and it's lack is one of my pet peeves from my working life,
so forgive me my passion on this subject.  But perhaps I can say something
useful.

There are two kinds of code documentation that are useful:
1. Documentation that describe what a user of the system needs to know.
2. Documentation that describe what a maintainer / extender of the system
needs to know.
These can overlap, especially in the case of classes that are meant to be
subclassed - then users need to know about implementation details.

Users need to know the public interface (I'm thinking about the human end of
this, the API for a set of tools/class, including but not limited the formal
interface to any specific class). They need to know what each class is for.
How to use each class. What its limitations are.  And how the code fits into
the system, for instance what alternatives they have to using that
particular class.

Exactly the same questions need to be answered for each method.

If an object is a singleton, users need to know the name of the global that
holds it, and/or the method that accesses it. In Smalltalk a singleton
object can be hidden behind a chain of method invocation on a global. These
should be documented in one place so that a user knows all of his options
and can find everything.

Maintainers need to know all of the above plus:
    what dependencies (for instance default behaviors in Object) are,
    side effects,
    for each variable:
        what it holds (types),
        when it's initialized
        when it can change, what code can change it
     in general, life-times of data,
    hooks into the rest of the system,
    what other parts of the system uses this class,
    how to extend the class, add planned features
    if there are any surprises in how or where some data or function is used
anywhere in the whole system, that should be documented both in the source
and destination.
    For methods (and systems as a whole) what the algorithms are.

I'll grant that Smalltalk's tradition of having a word that names each
parameter in a method invocation improves the self-documenting quality of
Smalltalk code, but there are limitations to how much good that does.

I downloaded all of the books available and bought a copy of  purple book. I
don't think any of the books has reference documentation for each class, let
alone for each method or global.  I'll look into getting a copy of the
standard.

Anyway I think it's a good idea to put all that human communication in one
place, cross referenced etc.  You're right that any documentation will
become obsolete as soon as the code changes, but having documentation is
still worthwhile.  I suppose we could gat around that problem by making a
book auto-build from specially formatted code comments and encourage code
maintainers to keep their comments up to date.

Or maybe a having a documentation guru is a good idea.

Joshua Scholar
----- Original Message -----
From: "tim Rowledge" <[hidden email]>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 9:51 PM
Subject: Re: Good, thorough Smalltalk reference

<[hidden email]> wrote:


> I suppose we could gat around that problem by making a
> book auto-build from specially formatted code comments and encourage code
> maintainers to keep their comments up to date.

That was attempted for Squeak 3.2, see
http://www.oldenbuettel.de


Perhaps one should reactivate that work?

Il giorno dom, 15/01/2006 alle 21.51 -0800, tim Rowledge ha scritto:
Maybe we should create a Squeak Application Development Guide.
Such a guide could contain a description of the language, explain how to
use the basic tools (from Browsers to Method Finders to the profiling
tools) and a brief description of the main classes of the system (the
ones which don't usually change every time you load a new package) and
examples on how to use them.
It could have guides to many other tools and packages - Monticello,
VMMaker, Seaside etc, with the most used patterns and development
practices.
Kinda like the new blue book, but in sync as possible with the current
Squeak release.

The Foundation could sell paper copies of the guide using a
print-on-demand service such as lulu.com, as a mean to raise funds.

        Giovanni

On 1/16/06, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Documentation, and it's lack is one of my pet peeves from my working life,
> so forgive me my passion on this subject.  But perhaps I can say something
> useful.
>
Yup, but please don't cut trees for it. Documentation in bookform
(even electronic, like PDF) is all but unusable in Smalltalk.

What *is* needed, is better class documentation. And maybe a nice full
text search system. The system must document itself, because as Tim
remarked, there is no such thing as a single Smalltalk system.

Apart from that, when learning Smalltalk I didn't go for the big, fat
reference books. My Smalltalk bookshelf consists mainly of a couple of
thin volumes:
- The Art and Science of Smalltalk (Simon Lewis);
- Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns (Kent Beck);
- Smalltalk, Objects and Design (Chamond Liu).
None of these are specifically about Squeak, but if you grok Smalltalk
then finding your way around in any specific implementation shouldn't
be too hard. All of them try very hard, each in its own way, to bring
across what Smalltalk is about and how to develop in it.

On 16.01.2006, at 09:21, Cees De Groot wrote:

I disagree. Of course, once you know how to use Squeak, you don't need
a book. But a book woukd be crucial if the goal is to make it easy for
new people to learn it.

First problem: People who want to discover Squeak won't *believe*
that a book is not needed. Don't even try. If the goal is to make  
Squeak easy
to learn, write a book. Kind of like an API to implement. Leran ==  
Book. No book,
no learn.

Another thing is that a book should tell you the stuff that is not  
trivially apparent,
like how to use Squeak to find more infos so you don't need that  
book ;-)

It should talk about Design, Patterns, good style, good ideas (e.g.  
testing), stuff
like that. You can't tell me that this is "apparent" from just  
looking at Squeak
(especially as Squeak is mostly an example of what *not* to do!)

And trees: That's what it is, even today. I print every paper I have  
to read,
I don't know many people who read pdfs on screen.

I don't think that a language can be successfull without having
"the book" published. E.g. Ruby's success ouside japan is
  unthinkable without the book.

    Marcus

Andrew Catton puso en su mail :
And for this and original question, what experienced people do good advices,
here is mine/

1) Define a first project in what you wish start, not so big.

2) Download a "basic" Squeak , or if you wish try SqueakLight and have full
support in his beginners oriented community, SqueakRos (105 members today)

We start a "SummerTeam" experiment where students have the step by step
guide to complete , in each case, a game, how use Squeak for doing
presentations/ tutorials/ end user material, or basic and not so basic
server things

3) As was writed, you could read books, but nothing is like as let Squeak
teach you the "how to " things

At you service

Edgar, the Concierge/Door man/ Portero



       

       
               
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On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 01:31:37 -0800, Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> 2) Download a "basic" Squeak , or if you wish try SqueakLight and have  
> full
> support in his beginners oriented community, SqueakRos (105 members  
> today)

Solamente en espanol?

Am 16.01.2006 um 10:00 schrieb Marcus Denker:

+1

However, for such a book you need a great author, particularly for  
the Good Style part, which should not be a separate part but mention  
it in passing. I'm a bit sceptic the community could create such a  
thing, I rather think some individual would have to take this on.  
There have been people on this list with a great writing style, but  
it's a major undertaking none-the-less.

Something that would be possible for the community might be updating  
the Orange Book for Squeak. That would be particularly helpful to  
newbies, learning the Smalltalk way of interactive development,  
rather than the edit-save-compile-run-crash-cycle they're usually  
used to. This is the basic thing you cannot learn from looking at  
source code.

Instead of dead-tree class documentation I'd rather have a filtering  
System Browser which shows only selected classes and methods, based  
on a community effort to properly categorize methods.

- Bert -

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 02:22:15 -0800, Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]>  
wrote:

> However, for such a book you need a great author, particularly for the  
> Good Style part, which should not be a separate part but mention it in  
> passing. I'm a bit sceptic the community could create such a thing, I  
> rather think some individual would have to take this on. There have been  
> people on this list with a great writing style, but it's a major  
> undertaking none-the-less.

I tried to sell a publisher on a book like this (for VAST) back in the  
mid-'90s. Even though I never could sell it, I'd still love to do it.

It is a huge undertaking, of course, and I haven't had the time/money to  
do it "for fun". When thinking about how it would break down, I've come up  
against Squeak's volatility. So many fundamental things about Squeak are  
changing right now.

Hi Edgar,

I don't think you understood my message (including the fact that it  
was a suggestion, not a request for help ;)) -- my point is that it  
would be interesting to try to capture what is so unique about  
working in a live environment like Smalltalk (or Self, etc. for that  
matter) and to provide this to newbies.. Once one becomes an  
experienced Smalltalker it becomes easy to take for granted the  
ability to so freely interact with your environment, so much so that  
we might even be tempted to think of "let Squeak teach you the "how  
to " things"" as being on par with choosing a small project and  
downloading the system :)

If a newbie's background with learning languages and development  
environments has been limited to books and stuff like javadocs, the  
fact that you can just grab live objects, interrogate them, change  
the data and the code, all as part of your regular work, is going to  
seem very strange.. If you can find a way to help them understand  
this, the details of the language, class libraries, etc. aren't going  
to phase them at all.

I think we run the risk of sounding cryptic/obnoxious to "outsiders"  
when we say "just learn from the system", without providing guidance  
on how they might actually do so.

Cheers, Andrew

On 16-Jan-06, at 1:31 AM, Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene wrote:

======================

Andrew Catton
Smallthought Systems Inc.
[hidden email]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 02:58:53 -0800, Andrew Catton  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> I think we run the risk of sounding cryptic/obnoxious to "outsiders"  
> when we say "just learn from the system", without providing guidance on  
> how they might actually do so.

"Heuristic Smalltalk"

Rich,

Others have offered far better than two cent's worth; all I've got is one
shiny penny.  As has been pointed out, Squeak and Smalltalk are dynamic
systems which change both with development and with use, so a generic book
is bound to be at least somewhat inaccurate.  My suggestion, therefore, is
to look into a book which defines or even includes the precise version of
Squeak (or other Smalltalk) upon which it is based.  This will, by the
nature of the beast, leave you with a more or less outdated version of the
language, but it shouldn't be outdated by much and can probably be updated
(as can you) fairly easily.

The most current of these, as far as I know, is Stef's "Squeak: Learn
Programming with Robots," ISBN 1590594916.  This book takes the reader by
the hand, assuming nothing, and leads on to a pretty fair overview of both
Squeak / Smalltalk and of programming in general.  A huge advantage of this
book is the author's active participation on this list.

Two more excellent choices are Mark Guzdial's "Squeak: Object-Oriented
Design with Multimedia Applications" (ISBN 0130280283) and his later
"Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia" (ISBN 0130280917).  Both of
these are based on older versions of Squeak (which they include) and deal
especially, as you might guess, with Squeak's particular strengths in
multimedia, but both are quite useful.  Finally, "Squeak: A Quick Trip to
ObjectLand" (ISBN 0201731142) by Gene Korienek et al, teaches Smalltalk in a
conversational manner which some love and some hate, using Squeak (included)
as its foundation.

None of these are "references" per se, which as others have pointed out is a
tough thing to do, but any of them can bring the user to the point where the
self-referencing features of Squeak / Smalltalk can be understood.

I hope that helps.

Gary


----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 9:23 PM
Subject: Good, thorough Smalltalk reference


So that I don't have to keep posting queries to this list like the one
I just posted, I was wondering if anybody could recommend a good,
thorough Squeak/Smalltalk language reference.  So far searching online
I've found alot of "The 5 minute intro to Smalltalk" type stuff, but
as these intros becomes less helpful as I try to do more interesting
stuff (after all, you can only add 2 numbers or filter a list so many
times in the Workspace before the "coolness" wears off ;-).  Thanks
alot.

-Rich



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Andrew Catton puso en su mail :
Squeak should come with some similar to CookBooks of VisualWorks.
I also work on this, but still need lots of works.
Having a prototype help system what lets do note books , and export to a
blog or a Swiki form
Or just have all Squeak, as you can see in this Monticello help

Edgar