Introduction to Smalltalk

Introduction to Object Oriented Programming with Smalltalk

Basic Computer Skills

1. Object Oriented Concepts
• Basic terminology and concepts
• What is an Object?
• What is a Class?
• What is an Instance?
• Smalltalk Code Example
• Smalltalk Views: Transcript, Workspaces,Inspectors
2. Object Oriented Programming
• Working in the Smalltalk Image
• Messages and Message Processing
• Variables and Assignment
3. Working With Classes
• Class Naming Conventions
• Creating Classes: The Class Definition
• Class Browsers
• Building Classes: Adding Variables and Methods
• Nil
4. Class Hierarchies
• Superclass
• Method Inheritance and Overrides
• Self and Super
• Working with the Hierarchy Browser
• Class Initialization
5. Fundamental Smalltalk Classes
• Literals: Numbers, Characters, Strings
• Arrays
• Scope of Variables
• Class, Global and Pool Variables
• Booleans
6. The Smalltalk Development Environment
• Garbage Collection
• Browsing the Smalltalk image
• ENVY: Source Code Management
• Open Editions and Versions
• Releasing Code
7. Expression Syntax
• Equality versus Identity
• Comparing Objects
• Copying Objects
• Printing Objects
• Introduction to Error Handling
8. Blocks
• What is a Block?
• Conditional Selection
• Lazy Initialization
• The Collection class
• Working with Collections: select:, reject: detect: do:
9. Resolving Programming Errors
• Debugging, revisited
• Browsing the Smalltalk image
• Finding Message Senders, Implementors and References
10. Collection Subclasses
• Bag
• Set
• Dictionary and IdentityDictionary
11. Sequenceable Collection Protocol
• Methods common to all Sequenceable collections
• OrderedCollection and SortedCollection
• Strings and Symbols
12. Working with Streams
• The Stream class: testing and enumerating streams
• The Stream Hierarchy: PositionableStream, ReadStream, WriteStream
• Writing a printString method
13. Working With Files
• Managing Files and Directories
• Reading Directory Contents
• Working with FileStreams: Reading and Writing
14. Prompters
• MessagePrompter
• TextPrompter
• FileStreamPrompter