By the way, Steph has fought to get the license released for the Robots book. So I think it is now available under a creative commons license. Still worth buying, but that is great news for the community going forward.
On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:18 AM, David Mitchell<david.mitch...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Max Norman<maxnor...@comcast.net> wrote: >> I'm a novice programmer, who, at the suggestion of several more experienced >> developers, is attempting to get familiar with Smalltalk before moving on to >> Ruby, to more thoroughly learn and understand the concepts of >> object-oriented programming. First off, is this worth doing? > > I think so. Several of the most active presenters at our local Ruby > user's group were Smalltalkers first. > >> >> Second, does anyone have any experience with Stephane Ducasse's 'Learning to >> Programing with Robots'? The book appears to be aimed at absolute beginners, >> like myself, who need to cover the conceptual aspects of programming before >> moving on to different languages. Is it worth buying and studying? > > Steph actually fought for the creation of the beginners list (and is > probably reading now). > > Great book. I've used this book as courseware for people with no > programming experience. My two sons (12 and 11) are working through it > right now. One of the things I've noticed is without this book, I tend > to gloss over programming concepts that are explained carefully (like > looping, iteration, when to write a routine, etc.) > > After that book, I'd recommend > > - Kent Beck's Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns (not Squeak specific) > but very handy for learning idioms. Try reading a pattern a day. Many > of them won't make any sense, but eventually they will start to click. > - Chamond Liu's Smalltalk, Objects, and Design (written for VA) but > great for learning Smalltalk > > Certainly keep Squeak by Example handy (at least in electronic form) > as you learn. > >> 'Squeak by Example' appears to be for more experienced programmers, who are >> approaching Squeak/Smalltalk from a linguistic perspective. > _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
