"Your days, as scientist are counted, if you refuse to accept anything new.." same words, i think, can be applied to programming.
On 30 March 2014 22:31, Esteban A. Maringolo <emaring...@gmail.com> wrote: > When I first met Smalltalk, I found its syntax to be so disruptive to > my mindset that made me want to learn it (I was coding Perl at that > time). But not everybody feels the same. To some it is scary. Or > unintelligible. > > It is true that many C like languages have hundreds of constructs, but > it is also true that almost all the programmers know how to code in > one of them, so then the knowledge mapping kicks in and those hundred > of constructs reduce to a bunch of differences (something our brain is > prepared to do very well). > > In the past one motto for smalltalk was "talk small, and carry a big > class library". Nowadays class library is the king, and we like or > not, we smalltalkers just talk small. Though, I would not change > Smalltalk's syntax for anything else. > > Regards! > > > > > > Esteban A. Maringolo > > > 2014-03-30 16:24 GMT-03:00 Yuriy Tymchuk <yuriy.tymc...@me.com>: > > For me Smalltalk and Lisp are the easiest languages. In smalltalk > everything > > is an object and in lisp everything is a list. And in other languages you > > have to learn 100500 language constructs and hacks. > > > > Uko > > > > > > On 30 Mar 2014, at 20:52, kilon alios <kilon.al...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Smalltalk is the easiest language I have learned so far. Python coming > > second and quite close. > > > > I also find Squeak by Example and Pharo by Example very good introductory > > guides. Smalltalk By Example is even better if you want to know more > about > > the language. > > > > Smalltalk is similar to Lisp in the sense that it follows its own path > and > > it takes some time to escape the C syntax. But overall Smalltalk and Lisp > > are excellent choices for beginner coders. > > > > The article you linked contains those peculiarities but those things will > > become apparent to anyone following Pharo by Example. > > > > And I dont think you will find many people arguing that C++ , Java are > more > > readable than Smalltalk and Lisp. Sure to people that are not that > > experienced could be. But even in that case, I dont quite believe it. > > > > Overall however learning languages is not a big deal, its learning > libraries > > that can become a real torture. For example I hated C++ because of MFC > and I > > strongly disliked Java because of Swing. Now that I am learning > Javascript , > > I dislike it because of DOM , Jquery etc . Also Its easy to find good > > documentation for languages much more difficult for libraries. > > > > So I am not buying that Smalltalk is anything else than very easy to > learn. > > Other than that like any language out there it takes some time to get > used > > to some things. > > > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 9:04 PM, Ben Coman <b...@openinworld.com> wrote: > >> > >> I came across this article a few days ago. Thought it might be of > >> interest to some. > >> http://www.eli.sdsu.edu/courses/spring01/cs635/readingSmalltalk.pdf > >> > > > > > > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.
