This top-down practical implementation guide covers Smalltalk applications written in Digitalk PARTS, Visual Age, or Visual Works. After a brief, useless discussion of the history of Smalltalk in chapter 1, chapter 2 appealingly presents some basic object-oriented concepts. Chapter 3 is a case study of implementing a full accounting application in PARTS; the emphasis is on the assembly of objects and on the pseudocode specification. Beginners may find the specification difficult to assimilate.

Chapter 4 is about Visual Age and how to migrate from pure Smalltalk code to PARTS. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss this migration further. Chapter 6, in particular, covers native Smalltalk, including linked lists, stacks, binary trees, and B-trees. The introduction states higher ambitions related to coverage of programming methodologies and organization (such as responsibility drivers) and documentation; most of this material does not add much to the book. The book’s main strength is its intuitive presentation of how visual tools allow for fast Smalltalk development in different environments.