Smalltalk Objects And Design

Smalltalk Objects And Design by ChamondLiu. Manning Publications, 1996.

What I liked most about this SmalltalkBook was the confidence with which Liu present a wide range of topics: objects, architecture, gui, frameworks, design, patterns - all the right stuff. If a bright developer from some other branch of our discipline were to use his book as his only source of information, he would come off as savy and well connected, even at a smalltalk conference. And he would enjoy the experience too, since Liu never talk down to his readers.

I'm also happy with his use of object-disks as figures. This is an intuitive figure where objects have state in the middle and protocol all around it. This was David Taylor's contribution to the practice. It makes visual sense. And, yes, I think it even looks good on his CRC-cards. -- WardCunningham

Chamond tells me that I jumped to conclusions about the source of the doughnut ...

BTW, DaveCollins? and I once looked into the history of "doughnuts"/"object-disks." Dave wanted to know if I invented them or where I got them from. I wasn't sure. I know I started to use them in my courses in late 1988 or early 1989. [There's one with spokes on page 52 of the original edition of Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach, by Brad Cox, published 1986, but I think they're older than that. -- MitchellModel] I have a vague recollection that I started drawing them because I wasn't satisfied with the elegance, or lack thereof, of the object sketches that TomLove was using in his talks in 1988. Anyway, my memory is so bad that I would not swear that I invented the notation. Further trivia: Originally, I always drew radial spokes to separate method names from one another. But minimalism eventually won out, so as you see in the book, the spokes are now gone. Besides, I always found that the spokes cramped my already marginal penmanship. -- ChamondLiu

The first time I saw object-disks (with spokes, but not actually putting method names in the outer ring, was in WebObjects documentation. -- KeithRay

This is my favorite Smalltalk (and OO design) book. I have read it several times over and loan it out to new Smalltalkers on our team. I even gave it to my wife, who is not a programmer and hates reading manuals, when she wanted to understand what programming, OO, and Smalltalk were like. She had a blast with the animal examples. -- DavidMitchell

For those who are interested (like me), two whole chapters of the book, chapters 1 and 16, are downloadable as zip files from https://secure.manning.com/books/liu/chapters. -- FalkBruegmann

This book was also reprinted in a packerback format by iUniverse.com (http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=1%2D58348%2D490%2D6). At their site, you can browse the entire book (http://books.iuniverse.com/viewbooks.asp?isbn=1583484906). --MarinoDuregon

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