mo@prisma (12/30/88)
I am really sold on Smalltalk/V for the Mac. It overcomes most of the user interface issues of vanilla Smalltalk (I firmly believe an N button mouse has N-1 too many buttons) and has a wonderful book and machine FileIn-able tutorial with it. Further, I got it UPS Blue for $176.50 (grand total including shipping) from Microware's mailorder desk in Palo Alto. While some university types may be able to get ParcPlace at an almost reasonable price, I only have a Mac+ upgraded to 2megs, and cannot afford the usual list nor a 4-5 meg Mac II to run it on. Further, I think the Smalltalk/V environment is a lot less cluttered than the virgin Xerox image systems I've played with. The Class Encyclopedia is very well done and the supplied class heirarchy is pretty cleanly thought out. (Meaning, it seems to make more sense than the pure Xerox image.) They have done a great job of giving the system a Macintosh user interface which makes it much easier to learn - no mouse shock, no "everything you know is wrong." Further, you can prototype Mac programs very easily. On the whole, if you want to learn about OOPS and aren't rich, Smalltalk/V really seems like the ticket.