Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!oitnews.harvard.edu!purdue!lerc.nasa.gov!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!dimensional.com!winternet.com!news.minn.net!skypoint.com!umn.edu!dialup-10-a-12
From: jhgreve@epx.cis.umn.edu (John Greve)
Subject: Re: Why are there so many mistakes in Smalltalk Books?
Message-ID: <DG9tv9.Gnu@news.cis.umn.edu>
Sender: news@news.cis.umn.edu (Usenet News Administration)
Nntp-Posting-Host: dialup-10-a-12.gw.umn.edu
Organization: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4
References: <vgoel.17.00102B1F@iss.nus.sg>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 05:25:35 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <vgoel.17.00102B1F@iss.nus.sg>,
   vgoel@iss.nus.sg (Vimal Goel) wrote:
>I am a beginner Smalltalk programmer. It is annoying to find that these 
>authors have rushed books to press without doing an adequate job of 
>proofreading.  As examples: 
>            'asLowercase' should have been 'asLowerCase'
>           I can't find 'isAlphabetic' method selector, mentioned in 
>LaLonde's book, in Digitalk's implementation.  I think that 'isLetter' would 
>work.
>
>Q 1. Does anyone access to errata sheets on these books?
I've only read the LaLonde's "Discovering Smalltalk".
Errata? Hmm... I didn't bother to collect a list of typos.
If I had, it would have been a pretty short list (I found
only a few typos - less than a handful as I recall).

>Q 2. Would I be better off going with Digitalk's tutorial first?
Using Digitalk's (16bit) tutorial, I found it difficult to keep my
image in synch w/what the tutorial was doing.
Note that I was keying each section in by hand instead of filing
in each section's image.
Although eventually I ended up filing the sections in anyway (I'm sure
thats how the tutorial was designed to be used, my memory just works
better when I take the long route w/learning things).
I think I gave up trying to get the dog animation to work... :-)
>Thanks
>Vimal Goel

In closing, I found LaLonde's "Discovering Smalltalk" to be better than
the Digitalk tutorial - I definately got moreout of the LaLonde book.




John Greve
jhgreve@epx.cis.umn.edu
