GNU Smalltalk User’s Guide: Tutorial

6 Tutorial

What this manual presents: This document provides a tutorial introduction to the Smalltalk language in general, and the GNU Smalltalk implementation in particular. It does not provide exhaustive coverage of every feature of the language and its libraries; instead, it attempts to introduce a critical mass of ideas and techniques to get the Smalltalk novice moving in the right direction.
Who this manual is written for: This manual assumes that the reader is acquainted with the basics of computer science, and has reasonable proficiency with a procedural language such as C. It also assumes that the reader is already familiar with the usual janitorial tasks associated with programming: editing, moving files, and so forth.

• Getting started: Starting to explore GNU Smalltalk

• Some classes: Using some of the Smalltalk classes

• The hierarchy: The Smalltalk class hierarchy

• Creating classes: Creating a new class of objects

• Creating subclasses: Adding subclasses to another class

• Code blocks (I): Control structures in Smalltalk

• Code blocks (II): Guess what? More control structures

• Debugging: Things go bad in Smalltalk too!

• More subclassing: Coexisting in the class hierarchy

• Streams: A powerful abstraction useful in scripts

• Exception handling: More sophisticated error handling

• Behind the scenes: Some nice stuff from the Smalltalk innards

• And now: Some final words

• The syntax: For the most die-hard computer scientists