ducasse [ducasse@iam.unibe.ch] wrote
java@fiberia.com wrote:
bought squeak: trip to objectland book. big mistake. book has lots of typos & mistakes. stuck on first exercise.
Haven't noticed any typos but having the first example or two not work can be a bit disconcerting.
Don't the authors provide e-mail addresses ? If not... Hmm... a google search will eventual lead you to e-mail addresses for at least two of the authors. And the third seems to work for/with the other two in Oregon.
book mentions corrections on addison-wesley website. unable to find such a page on website. anyone have any clues on what next?
Hmm.... looks like they (Addison-Wesley) needs to get their act together. They seem to have two different web sites for this book:
http://www.aw.com/catalog/academic/product/1,4096,0201731142,00.html http://cseng.aw.com/book/0,,0201731142,00.html
and not the same content.
I'm sorry to say that but this book is not interesting.
For you or for anyone ? I've been reading it to see if it will improve my understanding of things Smalltalk & Squeak & I find a bit light but not offensively so.
Addison wanted to have a book on Squeak so they redesigned an old book to get a squeak product.
And as we all know, only "new" things are good. :-).
The older, non-Squeak edition seems to get mentioned as a good Smalltalk book in a number of places...
This book ends up in the category reads once throw away.
I won't quote from the book but words to that effect are actually stated somewhere in the introduction/preface to the book (which is available on a few web sites for the book).
and this is a pity because there are so much to show on squeak.
If you read the book the intent ISN'T to turn someone into a Squeak expert. It is using Squeak/Smalltalk to introduce object oriented programming concepts. For anyone who has been doing things with Smalltalk for a while... well... it'll probably put them to sleep.
The price they sold it is also crazy.
Can't say I'm thrilled with the price of ANY non-Microsoft/Linux related programming books "out there" but have assumed (wrongly?) that this is due to the usual "market forces" for anything resembling a textbook....
-Andy-