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Comment by jasoncapriati | Hacker News Reader

I'm intrigued. Can you point to a book or guide that expands this further, is beginner friendly and not 300 pages? Thanks!

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Perhaps "I Can Read C++ and Java But I Can’t Read Smalltalk"

pdf 10 pages

http://www.eli.sdsu.edu/courses/spring01/cs635/readingSmallt...

In the time it takes to write a 10 page document, any reasonable person could learn to read smalltalk.

No one is being asked to write a 10 page document.

Amber has a really nice interactive tutorial:

http://amber-lang.net/learn.html

It's actually running in your browser, and the whole thing is a live coding environment in disguise. Well worth a play.

First thing I get when clicking "DoIt" in Chrome or Firefox is "Parse error on line 1 column 47 : Unexpected character null".

Edit: turns out, I should've looked more closely. You're supposed to select particular text before pressing the button. If you do this it works. Still, they might want to consider a more friendly error message ;)

I think what it's trying to tell you is that you haven't selected any text inside the edit window. (I agree it's a terrible error message.)

Almost as terrible is the fact that the listed keyboard shortcut alternative to clicking DoIt (CTRL d) actually deletes, rather than executes, the selected text.

In Chrome, at least, Ctrl+Shift+D works. So might be an implementation detail.

You can also try SqueakJS https://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/

It implemented Smalltalk primitives in JavaScript so it can run a real, bit identical, Squeak image.

Maybe start with "Smalltalk 80: The Language", and just read the first three chapters:

http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....

Also available for $1.89 (plus shipping) used from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-80-Language-Adele-Goldberg/d...

Those are very dated and not really beginner friendly.

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