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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!ptsfa!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucdcsp!johnson
From: johnson@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Smalltalk source code?
Message-ID: <80500004@uiucdcsp>
Date: Sat, 18-Apr-87 13:09:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsp.80500004
Posted: Sat Apr 18 13:09:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 18:08:54 EST
References: <143@bnr-vpa.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:bnr-vpa.UUCP:-14300:uiucdcsp:80500004:000:1034
Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    Apr 18 12:09:00 1987


"Actually Little Smalltalk is very close to Smalltalk-80, except that
it has a textual interface which makes it VERY easy to learn and VERY
portable. I recommend it, after all if I want to learn Smalltalk why 
bother with the complicated interface issues."

This seems to me a very strange comment.  The Smalltalk user interface
is very easy to use, much easier than almost any Unix program.  Text
based interfaces may be familiar to some of us, but it only takes a
couple of minutes to learn how to edit text and change a program in
Smalltalk-80.  The graphical interface certainly is hard to port, though.

Becoming a Smalltalk expert is hard because you have to learn how lots
of classes work, how to use them, how to subclass them, and so on.  Once
you have learned this, code reuse makes you extremely productive.  Little
Smalltalk is easier to learn because it has less code, but this makes it
also less useful.  If you want to learn the principles of object-oriented
programming, not build systems, Little Smalltalk is great.