Learn Pharo with Vikid

I am a beginner at programming SmallTalk & Pharo in particular. The notes/lesson here are my attempt at learning the language and taking notes on what I have learnt in as clear a way that I can. Hopefully as a beginner you can benefit from this approach yourself.

Object and Messages

What this section is

This is the front page of my beginner’s notes on Pharo and Smalltalk, written as I learn it myself. Rather than a polished textbook, it is a learner’s trail: each linked lesson records what I worked out, in the plainest words I can manage, in the hope that a fellow beginner finds the same path easier.

Why learn Pharo at all?

Pharo teaches object-oriented programming in its purest, original form, everything is an object, and you make things happen by sending messages to objects. Because the whole system is live and inspectable (see Pharo for what “image-based” means), it is a wonderful place to actually see objects behaving, instead of only reading about them. The ideas you pick up here, objects, messages, classes, polymorphism, carry over to nearly every other language you will ever use.

An everyday analogy

Learning Pharo is like learning to cook in a glass-walled kitchen where nothing is hidden: you can watch every pot, open every drawer, and change the recipe mid-simmer. For a beginner that visibility is gold, you learn by poking at a living system and watching what happens.

Where to go next

Objects and Messages: the first and most important idea, how everything in Smalltalk is an object receiving a message.
Pharo: the bigger picture, image-based programming and the Pharo Zen.

The truth revealed: the fastest way to learn a live system like Pharo is not to study it from outside but to climb in and start sending messages, breaking things, and watching them mend.