Kent Beck's Guide to Better Smalltalk: A Sorted Collection (SIGS Reference Library) [Paperback]

Kent Beck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0521644372 | ISBN-13: 978-0521644372

In this book, Smalltalk pioneer and guru, Kent Beck, weaves together a collection of his "landmark" articles from leading IT trade journals--The Smalltalk Report, JOOP, and Object Magazine. Written for Smalltalk programmers, this book is designed to help readers become more effective Smalltalk developers and object technology users. It is filled with insider tips, advanced techniques, and proven strategies on getting the most out of the Smalltalk language. Some specific topics covered are patterns, garbage collection, the use of CRC cards, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Kent Beck can pack more practical experience into one pithy maxim than most writers can do in a whole page." --James Rumbaugh

Product Details

• Paperback: 426 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (December 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521644372
• ISBN-13: 978-0521644372
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too many typos, November 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Kent Beck's Guide to Better Smalltalk: A Sorted Collection (SIGS Reference Library) (Paperback)

Kent Beck is a wonderful writer and has many good points to make in this book, but I can't recommend spending money on it unless the publisher produces a new edition correcting its hundreds of errors. Pages appear in the wrong order, parts of paragraphs are randomly duplicated, code samples are formatted incorrectly and nearly unreadable, and words appear in the wrong typeface making it difficult to distinguish identifiers from prose. Many of the articles appear to have been scanned in using OCR software and not subsequently proofread, or possibly proofread by someone who didn't understand the content. The lack of quality control is simply appalling.

Better organization of the material would also have been helpful. The "Sorted Collection" is sorted by date only. This may be useful to those interested in tracing the recent history of Smalltalk, but not to those wanting to learn most efficiently.

Much of the material in this book is better and more thoroughly presented in Beck's other books. At best, this book can be seen as a haphazard introduction to Beck's ideas that will spur some programmers to learn more about Smalltalk, object-oriented design and Extreme Programming.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent journey of Smalltalk philosophy, January 23, 2000

By 

Stuart Charlton (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kent Beck's Guide to Better Smalltalk: A Sorted Collection (SIGS Reference Library) (Paperback)

This book is quite distinct from Beck's other works in that it provides the reader an intellectual journey: through the reprinted articles, you can see the evolution of Kent's writing style, the beginnings of the "design patterns" movement, and the ever changing opinions about what to do / what not to do with Smalltalk.

There are many classic papers in this work, such as the original CRC-cards paper, and aptly-titled pieces such as "Death to Case Statements!". The code examples are clear and easy to read, and I found the chronological ordering of the papers to be appealing.

This book is not just for Smalltalkers - it's for anyone with an interest in object orientation: patterns, idioms, and philosophy.