Fwd: Three wishes of a wannabe developer

[John Almberg]

>> Several reasons:
>>  - you will learn good habits
>>  - you will, by necessity, learn and object oriented approach
>>  - Squeak is a great learning tool, with excellent debugging tools
>
> Sounds like the main arguments that used to be made for learning  
> Pascal.
>
> Might be good, but not subscribed to by very many.
>

Actually, I did learn Pascal in University :-) A great language for  
learning structured programming. But that was then (the 70s).

We also learned VAX assembler, which is more to my point:

Because I learned VAX assembler first, it was easier for me to learn  
C, which practically mapped directly to the VAX instruction set.  
Knowing that C was nothing more than a glorified assembler kept me  
from making the serious mistakes that people who thought C was a high- 
level language, made.

My argument for Smalltalk is the same: If you learn Smalltalk first,  
then other OO languages will make a lot more sense, and you'll better  
understand the quirks of OO-tolerant languages, like C++ and Perl.

I'm also assuming that Rui's main goals are not vocational. That is,  
he's not trying to learn a language to earn a living. I'm guessing  
he's hoping to learn something new, to get his ideas out there, and  
to have a bit of fun. Smalltalk is easy to learn, and fun.

However, there are lots of ways to skin this cat... this is just my  
opinion.

-- John





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Websites for On-line Collectible Dealers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Identry, LLC
John Almberg
(631) 546-5079
jalmberg at identry.com
www.identry.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~