The Joy Of Smalltalk by Ivan Tomek is a 700 page free book available in pdf format. The goal of this textbook is to introduce concepts of object-oriented software development and the programming language Smalltalk as a vehicle for their implementation. Since the book does not make any assumptions about the reader’s background, it is suitable for newcomers to Smalltalk and even those who never studied programming.
Book Description
In fact, we use the text in a first year programming course for Computer Science students. However, since the scope goes well beyond essentials the book is also of interest to those who already know another programming language and want to learn object-oriented programming or Smalltalk.Readers who already know Smalltalk will also find the book useful because the presentation is quite different from that of other books and includes material not found elsewhere. This includes examples of implementation of conventional abstract data types, principles of implementation of customized user interfaces, processes, and a discussion of metaclasses with examples of metaprogramming. Besides, Smalltalk is always worth looking at from a different perspective because there is never an end to learning something new about this rich and flexible programming environment.
Table of Contents
- Object-oriented problem solving – essential concepts
- Finding objects
- Principles of Smalltalk
- True and False objects, blocks, selection, iteration
- Numbers
- Design of applications with user interfaces, Action Buttons
- Introduction to collections, Table widgets
- More sequenceable collections, List and menu widgets
- Unordered collections – sets, bags, and dictionaries
- Streams, files, BOSS
- Stacks, queues, linked lists, and trees
- More about user interfaces
- Processes and their coordination