Read an article about the language [everyone is]/[someone might be] raving about: Io.
Io was written in 2002, and it could be said to be “even more OO than Smalltalk”. Finding info on Io was quite hard, and a late-night talk with Mr. Wrigstad solved my entry into the language. Tobin H (.NET & Ruby) and Peter B (Perl & PHP) got interested after I had gushed about the features of the language.
Recently, I’ve read a lot of OO text, and have tried to grasp all the comp-sci that I never had in college. (And the reading comes along rather successfully, I might add.) Things have a way of informing each other, and I enjoy that effect at the moment.
OK, related links at SitePoint and elsewhere:
* JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming Part I
* JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming Part II
* Practical Common LISP, a free book on the functional (applicative) programming language you might have heard about. The book is light in attitude, and comes with killer examples, like a useful little CD database app. This is a relief from math examples (x, y, z := 100) and stuff out of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Employee examples.
And you can also get the skinny on LISP (together with some nice, loving commentary) in Mark Watson’s CC-licensed book Loving LISP, which is linked from this Creative Commons interview.
I just noted that Smalltalk was noted as an academic programming language on Wikipedia. The nerve of some people! They might not have heard of the very pragmatic successes of Seaside, the hip, new web framework for Smalltalk. Care to read some tutorials about it?