I am learning Smalltalk and will document my progress in a series of blog posts. I have heard too many interesting things about it to ignore it any longer. I am hoping to use it for web development and while learning it, to become a better programmer in other languages as well.

I tried to remember what the stepping stones have been so far:

• At RailsConf 2007, Avi Bryant talked about Smalltalk and Seaside.
• While listening to a computer science lecture, I heard quotes from Alan Kay, one of the Smalltalk inventors. What he said over 20 years ago is still relevant today. That is rare in the world of computers.
• At RailsConf 2008, Avi Bryant demonstrated Maglev — Ruby running on the Gemstone/S Smalltalk VM. This is the future world with no relational databases. Just magic distributed object persistence.
• When learning more about Extreme Programming, I found out that XP was invented in the Smalltalk community.
• I keep hearing that learning Smalltalk will stretch your mind and make you a better programmer.

So there are a number of reasons to get familiar with Smalltalk. Enough reasons for me to get started:

1. I installed Squeak on my Mac since it is open source and Seaside uses it.
2. I read the article “Design Principles Behind Smalltalk” to better understand ST’s philosophy and underlying concepts. It was written in 1981 by Dan Ingalls, one of the inventors of Smalltalk. Back to the future baby!
3. I am reading a free e-book titled “Squeak by Example“. It is a great introduction into the Smalltalk language and the Squeak environment.
4. Now that I can read Smalltalk code, I will start digging around in the Seaside source code.

All right, I have to go back to my Smalltalk book now …