=== Top of the Swiki === Attachments ===
Blue Book
Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation; AdeleGoldberg and DavidRobson
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Addison Wesley, 1983.
ISBN 0-201-11371-6.
http:blueBook.jpg
Part One - an overview of the concepts and syntax of the programming language
Part Two - an annotated an illustrated specification of the system's functionality
Part Three - an example of the design and implementation of a moderate-size application
Part Four - a specification of the Smalltalk-80 virtual machine
(available on-line, see below)
From the preface
- Smalltalk is a vision
- Smalltalk has few concepts
- Smalltalk is an environment
- Smalltalk is a big system
see Blue Book - Table of Contents
see also Blue Book - comments and how to get it
The Purple Book is the Blue Book minus "Part Four" (of the Blue Book). Part Four describes the implementation of Smalltalk-80.
If you have Squeak then you have an implementation of Smalltalk-80 which you can read, and in a sense it is a description of itself.
So what you are missing by having the Purple Book plus Squeak, rather than the Blue Book, is only a particular description of Smalltalk-80.
Blue Book - Part Four