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I'm not really an ST fan myself. I'm not averse to it, or anything, but it has a steep learning curve, because you have to learn the class library, the IDE, and

I'm not really an ST fan myself. I'm not averse to it, or anything, but it has a steep learning curve, because you have to learn the class library, the IDE, and the language, and the poor tutorials and documentation make it even worse. Lisp had way better docs, and could be written in any text editor, so that's what I learned. However, if you want to learn Smalltalk, might I reccomend GNU smalltalk? it's got the excellent docs you'd expect from a GNU project, unix integration, and while it does have a class browser and an image, it supports plain old text files for code, so you don't have to master an IDE if you don't want to, plus it's good for scripting. However, it has (mostly) the same class library as Squeak and other smalltalks, so it lessens the learning curve somewhat.

horrido 10y ago
The language and IDE are so simple that it takes very little effort to learn, at least, in my experience. But you're right about the class library. However, is this really any different for any OOP language that has a rich class library? Or any language that has a rich API (<cough> Java <cough> C# <cough>)? Smalltalk documentation isn't that bad. Here's a very, very gentle tutorial: http://amber-lang.net/learn.html http://amber-lang.net/learn.html Here's a great (free!) book: http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/ByExample/ http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/ByExample/ And a great (free!) book for GNU Smalltalk: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/Gnu/ProgrammingUsingGnuSmalltalk.pdf http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/Gnu/ProgrammingUsi... And a great set of instructional videos from the late James Robertson: http://www.jarober.com/blog/st4u.ssp http://www.jarober.com/blog/st4u.ssp And a great Pharo blog: https://medium.com/concerning-pharo https://medium.com/concerning-pharo And, of course, you may ask questions at StackOverflow and the Pharo user forum: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  SBE is so far out of date that many of its details are now simply wrong. GST's docs are actually up to date, organized, and easy to find. However, I haven't seen all of these resources, so thanks for the tips.
  - bencoman71 10y ago
    > SBE is so far out of date Pharo By Example is being revised for Pharo 5. The first 13 chapters are done... https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExample https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExa... The whole book can be downloaded from... https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/view/Books/job/UpdatedPharoByExample/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/book-result/UpdatedPharoByExample.pdf https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/view/Books/job/Update...
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Thank god. Are there any major differences between Pharo and Squeak I should know about?
gnaritas 10y ago
That you're so unwilling to leave your text editor makes you unsuitable for Smalltalk, because Smalltalk without its image and IDE stuffed into text files that work with all your normal tools isn't Smalltalk. It's missing everything Smalltalk'ers love about developing in Smalltalk. Someone who wants to learn Smalltalk should try Pharo or Squeak, not GNU, GNU will just leave them with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason.
- seletskiy 10y ago
  Completely off-topic: I'm caught with your comments, can you, please, send a ping to me to s.seletskiy@gmail.com? I want to chat with you.
- groovy2shoes 10y ago
  > Someone who wants to learn Smalltalk should try Pharo or Squeak, not GNU, GNU will just leave them with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason. As someone who has tried Pharo and Squeak, I was left with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason. The colorful Playskool environment, while neat at first, was not only ugly and alien, but also quite minimal compared to Vim or Emacs. I still don't understand how anyone could possibly be productive in such an environment. What is it that's so attractive about it to Smalltalkers?
  - horrido 10y ago
    The article explains how you can be productive. It's mostly in the "live coding/debugging" environment, which dramatically shortens the edit-test-debug cycle. The low cognitive friction of the language itself is also preeminent. The clutter-free Smalltalk IDE is one its main selling points. I've used Xcode and Eclipse and Visual Studio, and the Smalltalk IDE is a breath of fresh air. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I like Smalltalk very much. Dolphin, in particular, is prized for its excellent IDE implementation. In practice, you don't need the full power of Vim or Emacs in a programming environment where you're ever only dealing with small methods and where everything is laid out neatly in the System or Class Browser. I love Vim, but I don't miss it here.

horrido 10y ago

The language and IDE are so simple that it takes very little effort to learn, at least, in my experience. But you're right about the class library. However, is this really any different for any OOP language that has a rich class library? Or any language that has a rich API (<cough> Java <cough> C# <cough>)? Smalltalk documentation isn't that bad. Here's a very, very gentle tutorial: http://amber-lang.net/learn.html http://amber-lang.net/learn.html Here's a great (free!) book: http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/ByExample/ http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/ByExample/ And a great (free!) book for GNU Smalltalk: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/Gnu/ProgrammingUsingGnuSmalltalk.pdf http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/Gnu/ProgrammingUsi... And a great set of instructional videos from the late James Robertson: http://www.jarober.com/blog/st4u.ssp http://www.jarober.com/blog/st4u.ssp And a great Pharo blog: https://medium.com/concerning-pharo https://medium.com/concerning-pharo And, of course, you may ask questions at StackOverflow and the Pharo user forum: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
SBE is so far out of date that many of its details are now simply wrong. GST's docs are actually up to date, organized, and easy to find. However, I haven't seen all of these resources, so thanks for the tips.
- bencoman71 10y ago
  > SBE is so far out of date Pharo By Example is being revised for Pharo 5. The first 13 chapters are done... https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExample https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExa... The whole book can be downloaded from... https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/view/Books/job/UpdatedPharoByExample/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/book-result/UpdatedPharoByExample.pdf https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/view/Books/job/Update...
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Thank god. Are there any major differences between Pharo and Squeak I should know about?

gnaritas 10y ago

That you're so unwilling to leave your text editor makes you unsuitable for Smalltalk, because Smalltalk without its image and IDE stuffed into text files that work with all your normal tools isn't Smalltalk. It's missing everything Smalltalk'ers love about developing in Smalltalk. Someone who wants to learn Smalltalk should try Pharo or Squeak, not GNU, GNU will just leave them with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason.

seletskiy 10y ago
Completely off-topic: I'm caught with your comments, can you, please, send a ping to me to s.seletskiy@gmail.com? I want to chat with you.
groovy2shoes 10y ago
> Someone who wants to learn Smalltalk should try Pharo or Squeak, not GNU, GNU will just leave them with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason. As someone who has tried Pharo and Squeak, I was left with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason. The colorful Playskool environment, while neat at first, was not only ugly and alien, but also quite minimal compared to Vim or Emacs. I still don't understand how anyone could possibly be productive in such an environment. What is it that's so attractive about it to Smalltalkers?
- horrido 10y ago
  The article explains how you can be productive. It's mostly in the "live coding/debugging" environment, which dramatically shortens the edit-test-debug cycle. The low cognitive friction of the language itself is also preeminent. The clutter-free Smalltalk IDE is one its main selling points. I've used Xcode and Eclipse and Visual Studio, and the Smalltalk IDE is a breath of fresh air. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I like Smalltalk very much. Dolphin, in particular, is prized for its excellent IDE implementation. In practice, you don't need the full power of Vim or Emacs in a programming environment where you're ever only dealing with small methods and where everything is laid out neatly in the System or Class Browser. I love Vim, but I don't miss it here.