This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: The best path to OO
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml
Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
Wilkes Joiner thinks that Smalltalk marks out the best path to really getting OO - I like this segment of his post:
Sometimes, I feel the best way to understand OO is to learn Smalltalk. It is such a radically different language and environment that it forces you to think differently. I don't mean to imply that if you've never used Smalltalk then you don't really understand OO. I just think that it can speed up the learning process. My recommendation for anyone new to OO or wanting to sharpen their skills is to download Squeak or VisualWorks, grab a copy of Kent Beck's Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, and write some code. I've created a very short Squeak tutorial, complete with videos, to get a developer up and running as short of time as possible. There are tons of other resources available out there. Go. Learn.
Warning: The first time I saw Smalltalk was free download of VisualWorks in 2000. I was learning J2EE at the time and my immediate reaction was, "We've been had!" Learning Smalltalk can leave you with a huge level of disappointment with the current "state of the art" languages.