On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 09:07:36AM +0000, Piers Cawley wrote: > Well, it's no surprise that Beck's a Smalltalk fan, he's written one > of the best books about the language that there is (sorry to bang on > about it, but Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns really is a very good > book). Personally I didn't find the Smalltalk stuff intrusive, but > (inspired by other books that continually hark back to Smalltalk) > taken the time go go and learn the syntax, there's almost nothing to > it really, I strongly recommend everyone do the same. Like Lisp, > Smalltalk is a mindwarping language, and I mean that in a good way.
Smalltalks never been on my list of to learn languages to be honest, i just ended up doing a double take when i saw the small talk code samples. Its hard to imagine a professional developer these days that doesn't know how to read at least some basic Java and changing to another language for a couple of samples just seemed unneeded. Is the Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns general enough that people without smalltalk backgrounds can take something away from it? If so I may end up adding it to my reading list. > Again, I didn't find this annoying, and if you do the code from the > book is available for download at > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/testdrivendevelopment/files/ This i didn't know and neither did i see it mentioned in the book, i never even thought of googling for it. I've just given the dollar zip the once over and this removes one of my negative points about the book. > Again, I didn't find this to be a problem; to be honest the *details* > of the implementation were secondary to the underlying thinking and > exposition and I found Beck's choice of code to show at each step to > be exemplary. Punctuating the book with lumps of 'the whole code as it > stands' would break the flow. And getting into that flow seemed to be > one of the most important skills that Beck was trying to teach. My reasoning behind this is that its better to 'waste' a page at the start to ensure everyone has a base point to start from. There are very few things as frustrating as not knowing what to do first. I understand the comment about breaking the flow but at the very least a small third appendix with some instructions and a link or two to JUnit would make it a lot easier to start off. Just out of curiosity did you work through the samples on a computer or just read through? I'm interested to know if our views differ because the route we took was different. > > Summary > > An interesting book that presents a useful approach, some good idea's and > > many pithy quotes but not a classic. > I have to disagree. Nice to know at least one person has read the review ;) Dean -- Dean Wilson http://www.unixdaemon.net Profanity is the one language all programmers understand --- Anon
