Kent Becks Guide To Better Smalltalk

Sorted Collection: Kent Beck's Guide to Better Smalltalk ISBN 0521644372

This is KentBeck's collected columns from various places including SmalltalkReport and DrDobbsJournal.

The content is fine. The introductions by Kent are interesting and enlightening. WardCunningham contributes the afterward which also appears at http://c2.com/doc/forwards/beck2.html.

But, oh, the typos and typesetting errors! There are hundreds. This has more errors than any published book I've read in the last 5 years.

Among the most annoying: pages 138 and 139 reversed. A introduction by Kent is repeated at the head of the wrong column (and so one is missing entirely). One article was clearly OCR'd at some point - there are three paragraphs with a (different) extraneous punctuation character in the same vertical position, at least two "resumings" that should be "returning"...

There are lots of font errors (e.g. method names not in the "code sample" font). Dozens of missing full stops/periods. Unfortunate page breaks and hyphenation points (especially on technical terms). Duplicated or missing fragments of sentences. Poor layout of code fragments (needs more whitespace e.g. between methods).

Oh, and they didn't put StarTrek in the StarTrek font (and the way Kent words the introduction to that paper makes me feel Kent didn't expect to see a proof of the book in time to correct these kind of errors?)

Some of these are somewhat technical in that I wouldn't expect a non-technical typesetter to notice them. But many are not.

Kent, you need to ask your publisher to invest in the services of a proof reader. A second edition with corrections wouldn't be a bad move - or an errata list in the mean time.

Nonetheless, a recommended book. Lots of aha!s and I HaveThisPattern for me.

-- PaulHudson

One of my favorite insults ever, I believe it was G.B.Shaw: 'It is difficult to find good proof readers now that priests are no longer defrocked for sodomy.' What a marvelously insulting thing to say, and to so many people at once!

I'm about halfway through the book now. Other than the typos noted above, my only complaint is that the articles are too short. (That's intended to be a compliment.) --KrisJohnson

I just got a copy and have started in on it. I remember reading many of these articles in their original form (The Smalltalk Report) back in my first Smalltalk Career (starting my second now). -- DaveAstels

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