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Smalltalk books
Last updated at 9:46 pm UTC on 21 March 2004
See also: Squeak books in print and Bibliography

Ah, good old fashioned books. The kind you curl up with and muse over. The kind that moths like the best. The kind you most easily get paid for writing. There are many books on Smalltalk, and this page lists some of them. If you think of one that's missing, go ahead and add it!

Unfortunately, some of these are out of print. A good resource for tracking down out of print/unavailable books is Bibliofind: http://www.bibliofind.com/

Stephane Ducasse has also provided a list of previously out-of-print books which have been made available for free here:
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html.

John M. McIntosh has posted 'Smalltalk books we can recommend' at the Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. site.
http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com/html/smalltalkbooks.html

Squeak: Object-Oriented Design with Multimedia Applications by Mark Guzdial

is out now and therefore is the first Squeak specific book.
The book support page: http://guzdial.cc.gatech.edu/squeakbook/
(See also Squeak books in print for a further description.)

Chamond Liu - Smalltalk, Objects, and Design

My favorite book for learning OO generally and Smalltalk in particular. Teaches objects, modeling, and some Smalltalk syntax. Very little computer programming experience is assumed. In fact, my wife (who is not a programmer) learned Smalltalk using it! Chamond was a lead on a project I worked on and I think he a great teacher. I have mentored other Smalltalk and OO newbies on other projects and this book is always my first recommendation. The GUI is IBM Smalltalk, so those chapters are not directly applicable to Squeak. – David Mitchell

This book is extremely well organized, clear, and succinct. I am a Squeak newbie, I know a couple of other programming languages, and I did not find the GUI difference to impede my understanding. This is a wonderful book for learning Squeak – Stephan Branczyk

A Taste of Smalltalk

Great for procedural conversion. Might be a bit much for someone totally new to programming. The first few pages presume you've written some code in some language (comparison examples from LISP, Pascal, and others). I was able to type in the code with almost no changes in MVC and had a blast doing it. I was surprised to get it through my local library's inter-library loan. It is,unfortunately, out of print. – David Mitchell

Smalltalk 80 - The Language

The Purple Book – more than adequate for an intro, and the portions of the Blue Book that were left out are now available on the Web. This is still one of my favorites. Again, not really the best for bootstrapping from no programming experience. However, if you are in to Smalltalk, you should get your hands on this one. And then beg, borrow, or steal (well, don't steal) the Red,Blue, and Green Books. Actually, I was surprised again at being able to obtain these through interlibrary loan. (The Blue Book arrived having only been checked out once, such a shame!) The Red Book (the one on the "Interactive Programming Environment") is also out of print but is an excellent intro to the Browsers, inspectors, debuggers, and workspaces that we all learn to take for granted. – David Mitchell

A Quick Trip to Objectland

(Why are the best books always out of print?) – David Mitchell

This one has come back, though, in a Squeak-specific version! See the entry in Squeak books in print. – Doug Way

Kent Beck - Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns

A classic, by the guy who went on to create the Extreme Programming methodology.

This was one of my first Smalltalk books. Still my most frequently referred to. Not a great intro, but picking out a pattern a day and just working the heck out of it. This book also encouraged me to read the image more than any other Smalltalk book I've read. (Kent continually talks about searching for all senders of thisAndSuch and it encouraged me to do the same). – David Mitchell

The best book I've seen for the experienced programmer, and its content needs to be taught to new programmers as quickly as appropriate so they develop good habits. It may be too late for me, but I'm trying really hard.

Peter Coad & Jill Nicola - Object Oriented Programming

Probably the best Smalltalk book that doesn't have Smalltalk in the title. I still see this book at Borders and it is one of my favorites. I think it does the best job of showing what building corporate systems is like in Smalltalk. Definitely not sexy, but one of the only books of its kind. Also, I think the students at GeorgiaTech use this book in their Squeak classes, so you can fileIn rather than type and not worry about compatibility issues. (This book also gives equal time to C++, but you can skip those sections entirely if you like) – David Mitchell

Patrick Henry Winston - On To Smalltalk

On To Smalltalk is good if you're experienced with programming, and you want to learn Smalltalk. This book uses Smalltalk Express for its examples, but a helpful Smalltalker has posted a list of corrections for use with Squeak at On to Smalltalk - Modifications for using with Squeak.

Inside Smalltalk

Volume II by Wilf R. LaLonde and John R. Pugh explains MVC

The Colored Books


Smalltalk with Style - Klimas, Skublics, Thomas

Prentice Hall; ISBN 0-13-165549-3; QA76.73.S59S58 1996

A small book that addresses the issue of style. Thiink of it as a Chicago Style Manual for Smalltalk.
From the preface:

"The purpose of a programming style guide such as this book is to provide a basic vehicle for addressing the needs of readers and writers. ..... The intention of the guidelines is to make source code clear, easy to read, and easy to understand. Such source code is more likely to be correct and reliable. It will be easier to adapt, maintain, and evolve."

Given the recent discusions on squeak-dev maybe we should give a copy of this book to ever squeak programmer :-) Frank Caggiano