good books (was: learning Lisp)

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

On Thursday 20 February 2003 19:53, Brian T Rice wrote:
> Yeah, it's a huge disparity, and I love the way the Squeak community
> treats its members, but we're unfortunately in a totally different
> situation, with 7 years of dead time, little code, and documentation
> that still needs a hell of a lot of work.

I agree, and besides that Squeak (like Merlin) was created for children 
and newbies while I think that Tunes is more like Chuck Moore's 
ColorForth - he created it for himself and if other people are 
interested, fine, but that is their problem and not his.

My point was that there are often several different ways of saying the 
same thing and you will get different reactions with them.

> Speaking of the Slate documentation, I do have a new version of the
> manual that I'd like to release soon (I've been somewhat steadily
> improving it for a few months), but it still needs a quantum leap to
> be the kind of manual that can be read without any background. Do you
> have any suggestions of a pattern to follow or some language manual
> that's similar enough and has the right level of detail and
> approachability?

I liked the manual that came with the original Methods and then 
Smalltalk/V the best. Tim Budd's "Little Smalltalk" book was very nice 
too. I have the original blue book ("Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its 
Implementation") and liked the middle part with the class catalog. The 
introduction had too many circular definitions for my taste.

While I mentioned Patrick Winston's original Lisp book as really great, 
I didn't like his Smalltalk book very much. Its style would probably 
have been better for Python.

If you don't mind me branching off into a totally unrelated thread: what 
is the relation between Slate, Arrows and Tunes? The reason I ask is 
because I am trying to figure out ways to work together with other 
people. Back when Pios/Moose became Tunes, Faré and I talked about 
merging our projects. That didn't work out mostly for reasons that no 
longer exist (Merlin wasn't free then but is now, for example).

Cheers,
-- Jecel