web programming

The book is outdated, unclear in its focus, and makes assumptions for the reader. This book provides only a poor intro to Squeak and poorly touches up on OO principles. Liu's Smalltalk book is probably where one would want to start to get both worlds. Worst, this book is used at Ga Tech for a class titled "Objects and Design."

Also, all the previous book reviews on this page were reviews of Squeak and Alan Kay as opposed the book. So their 5 stars are misplaced.

This book is one of the early signs of the real computer revolution that is about to start, according to Alan Kay, a visionary from Disney, who, in essence, invented a computer world as we see it now. The book is about the language that is 3 times more productive than Java, and ported to 22 platforms. The language which domination is as inevitable as the dot-com crash. Mark is a member of the inner circle of Squeak development, so his knowledge of Squeak is superior. You will save yourself dozens of hours if you read this book. And this book just a pure fun to read. Get this book, it will change your thinking about computer programming forever.

As the author of several Smalltalk books myself, I tend to be a bit skeptical of new books about Smalltalk. But Mark Guzdial's excellent first book on the best Smalltalk implementation on the planet, Squeak, earns my highest respect. It is organized the way I suspect most people trying to learn a new language like such books organized. Rather than beginning with abstract concepts and then hoping you will be able to use those concepts to solve specific problems, Guzdial takes a practical, project-based approach.

This book does not purport to cover basic object-oriented design and programming paradigms but in fact it does at least an adequate job even for a relative beginner. It is clearly aimed at someone who has at least a smattering of programming training or experience, but you don't really need much to derive great value from the book.

It is true that since the book was released there is a newer version of Squeak, but the good news is that the author had the foresight to include on the accompanying CD-ROM the version of the language on which he relied to make the book examples work. I've been working with the newer version for some time but reverting to the older version for the purpose of the book wasn't difficult or painful.

I believe that Squeak IS the future of all kinds of computing and development, including the Internet/Web world, and it will behoove you to learn this wonderful language sooner than later. There is simply no better way to do that than to start with Guzdial's work. He's the prototypical teacher and the book is marvelous.