PREFACE
This book is about Smalltalk and objects, in more or less balanced measure. By this I mean that there is ample Smalltalk to expose and crystallize in the reader's mind all the important object-oriented design ideas, and not so much as to distract from them. Smalltalk is an excellent vehicle for this task because it is small and simple enough that learning about it intrudes as little as possible on learning about design. Yet it is rich enough to precisely clarify what can otherwise degenerate into academic discussions.By no means is this an advanced book, on either Smalltalk or objects. I have strived to stick to the matters that seasoned Smalltalk developers are fully aware of but consider too obvious to explain. These matters range from what today would be deemed elementary ("What do I mean by an object?") to sophisticated ("Can I reuse a pattern of objects?"), but mostly reside somewhere in the middle ground. I think back to how long (too long) it took me to internalize all these "obvious" matters and imagine that some well-placed explanations along the way could have saved me a good bit of trouble. I hope to save some of you that trouble.
One can't talk about objects and Smalltalk without also talking in practically the same breath about design. "Design" is a word that all computer people know, yet many still disagree about its meaning, or what it produces, or when it begins and ends. For the purposes of this book, to design is to discover alternatives, weigh them, and consciously choose among them. Design, like life, is all about striking the right balance. In this sense of design, we are liable to be designing even at moments when our job description says we are doing something else entirely: we may discover design alternatives and weigh or reject them while we are doing object analysis or modeling, writing code, or peeling carrots.
The goal is to design more like veteran software developers do. They choose among alternatives quickly and subconsciously, drawing upon years of experience, something like chess grandmasters choosing among moves. Lacking this experience, novices have a hard time discovering plausible alternatives, and an impossible time discovering subtle ones. For their sake then, I often argue alternatives and the trade-offs between them, so that they will have an outside chance of considering the same design alternatives that the veterans do.
The approach is not encyclopedic. Absent are systematic tours through class libraries, discussions of the visual programming or collaborative development tools that are available for Smalltalk environments, and discourses about notations and methodologies. Notations are as capable of obscuring ideas as they are of elucidating them, so the few that appear are deferred until they become indispensable to the presentation. If it is not already clear, let me also issue the explicit disclaimer that this is not a catalog of Smalltalk tricks and techniques.
Smalltalk is not the only way to think about object-oriented software. C++, the most widespread object-oriented language, contrasts sharply with Smalltalk in so many ways that awareness of C++ enriches the overall object-oriented experience. Therefore I include remarks about C++ whenever they may enhance your appreciation of objects.
For those new to objects, reading the chapters in order will make most sense. On the other hand, because of my own weakness for selectively reading portions of books, many chapters are relatively independent and accessible without having to digest everything that comes before. Thus, you can pick chapters and sections according to your background and goals, and if you encounter some you can't (or don't want to) crack, leave them and return later. It is even plausible to plunge immediately into Smalltalk (Chapter 3), referring to the first two chapters only as needed.
The examples are all as simple as possible, because the simplest things form the clearest and most surprising lessons. Exercises appear irregularly, whenever understanding the topic at hand demands active participation. There is a blend of design exercises and programming exercises that require a Smalltalk workstation. Solutions accompany the meatier design exercises, but of course even for exercises with solutions I recommend you try them first on your own.
The programming exercises are written on an IBM Smalltalk base. You can work them on either the Professional or Standard version of IBM Smalltalk or VisualAge. Most of them are generic enough that they, or variations of them, can be made to work for other dialects of Smalltalk, but only ambitious readers should attempt to do so. A few small hints for such readers appear in the Appendix. The exercises on windowing are a notable exception: interpreting them into other dialects will be beyond the means of even the most determined reader. Every dialect has its own event and windowing protocols, so building windows in other dialects is a wholly different experience.
Learning occurs differently in different people. That is why diversions--I call them "commentaries"--are separated out for some readers to blow by and others to dive into, according to their fancy. These diversions are variously technical (like comparisons with other ways of doing objects, particularly C++), historical, or philosophical.
When you finish the book, I hope you will be able to think about software problems in some of the ways that the veterans do, and be able to implement your thoughts in Smalltalk. Not expertly, however. Mastery of both object-oriented design and Smalltalk comes only with actual practice. Of course, these are truisms for any activities, from driving a car to playing the piano. But Smalltalk, more than most software tools, requires you to plunge in and abandon yourself to the language and environment. A taste for adventure definitely helps, more than in learning how to drive a car.
Notes on the organization
This is not an orthodox book. Much of its structure derives from my experiences in sustaining the eagerness and momentum of typical Smalltalk beginners for thirty-six or so hours a week, making sure that they learn some really important things. For example, polymorphism does not appear as a formal topic until Chapter 14, not because it is the fourteenth most important topic, but because students have matured enough by then to get an adrenaline rush from it.
You will not find a predictable or monotonous rhythm. People learn best when they sometimes sweat and program in the depths of Smalltalk proper, and at other times sit back and reflect on how ideas interconnect. One chapter (4) consists entirely of hands-on exercises, but on balance the book is weighted more toward thinking than coding.
Here, then, are a few alerts about the content.
The first fifteen chapters cover the basics, material that every practicing developer absolutely must know about objects in Smalltalk. The first two chapters establish a groundwork of objects, classes, and inheritance in a way that is meant to be completely reassuring. All nuances, paradoxes, and the like are reserved for later.
Chapter 3 is practically the only "language" exposition in the book. It covers probably 95 percent of the Smalltalk language and also forewarns readers of common gotchas. Chapter 4 is a concentrated opportunity to practice the lessons of Chapter 3 as well as many more essentials. You should surface from it with a sound intuition of what it's like to live in a Smalltalk programming environment. The orthodox approach is to spread this material around at least a little, but Smalltalk has so few facts and laws that it is feasible to get the bulk of them out of the way in this one fell swoop.
Chapters 5 and 6 begin the assault on major object-oriented conceptual matters, namely abstract classes, containers, and object identity. The next two chapters, 7 and 8, pause to tackle the nuts and bolts of designing and implementing a basic application. Chapters 9 and 10 resume the discussion of ideas essential to the sound practice of objects. This material questions, among other things, when inheritance produces the right design.
The next three chapters, 11 through 13, form a unit on the topic of user interfaces. They begin with an obligatory discussion of model-view-controller, continue with Motif programming (which is specific to the IBM dialect of Smalltalk), and conclude with how not to make a mess of the user interface. This final chapter in the unit is unusual for a book on objects. It is an attempt to emphasize the connection between objects and user interfaces and confront heads-down programmers with the moral obligation to do it justice.
Chapters 14 and 15 expound on polymorphism from several angles, enough to browbeat everyone into internalizing its value and applicability. These chapters fittingly conclude coverage of the essentials, the omission of any of which would be a major embarrassment for me and you.
Chapter 16 demystifies the workings of method dispatch, storage management, and the like, mostly emphasizing Smalltalk, but contrasting with C++ for the sake of perspective. The purpose is not so much academic as to demonstrate how these contrasting workings influence the development gestalt of an object-oriented language.
Chapter 17 should raise your consciousness about the two distinct rationales for inheriting, which I call beauty and the beast. Sensitivity to this issue is an earmark of mature object-oriented designers. The chapter includes a lengthy discussion of consistency (page 201), bordering on the philosophical, which is probably the headiest section in the book.
Chapter 18 covers some favorite design patterns, and how to realize them in Smalltalk. Because it ties together so many ideas, it should reassure you that you have actually learned something, because you will understand the patterns if and only if you've been conscientious about all the programming and thinking that have gone before.
Chapter 19 illustrates what object-oriented frameworks are and why they matter by way of one concrete client/server framework.
Chapter 20 is another demystifying chapter, and the most optional one in the book. I discuss the basics of metaclasses (a class's class) from the standpoint of what they buy the programmer, as well as the extraordinary lengths to which Smalltalk goes to preserve a uniform view of objects. Metaclasses are the final technical topic in the book, and are positioned last because the reader needs to have thoroughly internalized Smalltalk's conceptual underpinnings before appreciating them.
The book concludes with a subjective assessment (Chapter 21) of what is wrong and right with typical object-oriented development efforts.
Typographical conventions
Boldface type, as in MyClass, indicates Smalltalk names and code. Italics indicate emphasis and also special instructions, like picking the Display menu item. Text that would appear on a computer screen is in bold italics, as in Here is the result.
In keeping with a spirit of candor, no attempt has been made to homogenize the appearance of screen shots of Smalltalk browsers. Browsers vary from dialect to dialect, of course, but also within a dialect (e.g., the standard and Trailblazer browsers in IBM Smalltalk). For that matter, they can even be customized to display or suppress information, according to the whims of the programmer. Rather than present a façade of consistency, the browsers you will see are the ones that I happened to be using at the time.
"My good friend, every profession requires
effort and devotion and practice."-- advice to the young Perceval
[de Troyes 1190]
Return home