A Little Smalltalk

This is a wonderfull little book that not only introduces the reader to object-oriented programming, but also describes the implementaion of a SmallTalk-like language. Budd’s introduction to Smalltalk programming and the Little Smalltalk interpreter focuses on elementary, rather than advanced topics of object-oriented programming.

Book Description

The Little Smalltalk system runs under the UNIX operating system and can be executed on conventional terminals.Little Smalltalk is a non-standard dialect of the Smalltalk programming language invented by Timothy Budd. It was originally described in the book: “A Little Smalltalk”, Timothy Budd, Addison-Wesley, 1987, ISBN 0-201-10698-1.

The Little Smalltalk system was the first Smalltalk interpreter produced outside of Xerox PARC. Although it lacked many of the features of the original Smalltalk-80 system, it helped popularize the ideas of object-oriented programming, virtual machines, and bytecode interpreters. Timothy Budd later rewrote Little Smalltalk in Java, and distributes it as the SmallWorld system.

The original releases are under a variety of licenses. They are now maintained by Danny Reinhold via the Little Smalltalk project. Recently work on a new major version has begun. This differs from earlier releases by providing support for graphical applications, a foreign function interface, and numerous integrated tools.

Table of Contents

• Basics
• Syntax
• Basic Classes
• Class Definition
• A Simple Application
• Primitives, Cascades, and Coercions
• A Simulation
• Generators
• Graphics
• Processes
• Implementation Overview
• The Representation of Objects
• Bytecodes
• The Process Manager
• The Interpreter

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