Back in 1980-81, Xerox did some big talk on Sammltalk:U80 and invited (conned) a number of other organizations to build implementations of Smalltalk:U 80. All the computer cooks who had their fingers in this Smalltalk:U80 project pot have tasted, tested, and have now told about their trials and tribulations in taming this resource:Uconsuming language. This book should really be titled “AllTalk: bits of ‘hurtory,’ words of vice.”

One should have a familiarity with Smalltalk to get full value out of this book and its precursor [1]. Some terms like nullary function are either clever, bon mots or beyond my pale. There is a bit of rambling in many of these reports, especially in relation to stories about how management did this or that.

However, this book does contain some very valuable information on methods used to fine tune the implementations on sundry CPUS. Though it’s not my favorite, I’m surprised that no implementation was tried on the Z8000, whose architecture seems to conform to the language better than the M68000.

As is noted in the book, “Smalltalk research efforts focus on increasing the support that computing systems can provide to users who are not computer scientists by profession.” From Smalltalk the basic concepts of windows, icons, and scroll bars were derived. This book is recommended as long as you get the first book and are willing to be bored most of the timethe jewels are imbedded and must be pried out.

REFERENCES

[1] GOLDBERG, A.; and ROBSON, D.T. Smalltalk: the language and its implementation, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1983, See: CR this issue, Rev. 8507-0576