[I'm posting this for some friends who have asked about Smalltalk.]
"Smalltalk" refers to both the Smalltalk language and the Smalltalk environment. I've forgotten a lot about the environment, and even more about the standard libraries, but I remember the language pretty well, partly because Objective-C is a hybrid of C and Smalltalk. Here's a quick intro; hope it helps.
The one main thing to know is that Smalltalk is all about objects sending messages.
- Everything is an object.
- Smalltalk code does only two things: assign variables and send messages.
- Objects are instances of classes, which are themselves objects.
- Classes live in an inheritance hierarchy.
An object is a thing that:
- has state (in the form of instance variables),
- has behavior (in the form of methods, which are named blocks of executable code associated with the object's class), and
- can respond to messages.
There are only objects. That includes numbers, strings, windows, menus, classes, code blocks (including methods), and so on. Anything that's a "thing" is an object. There are no enums, no structs, no C-like "primitive" types as in Java, Objective-C, or C++. Only objects.
A message consists of a method name, called the selector, plus zero or more arguments. An object responds to a message by executing its corresponding method, if it has one. The code inside the method sends messages to other objects.
So: an object can respond to messages, and a message is a thing you can tell an object to do. An object responding to a message is called the receiver.
The terms "message" and "method" are sometimes used interchangeably, but it's important to understand the distinction. A message is like an interoffice memo that says "do X". A method is like the page titled "X" in the employee handbook. Note that different receivers of the same message can have different employee handbooks, and may therefore do "X" differently.
Although methods are essentially functions, this message-sending paradigm is different from the function-call paradigm in procedural programming. When you call a function in C, you identify the function by name and specify zero or more arguments. For example:
moveToXY(myTurtle, 5, 10);
By contrast, when you send a message in Smalltalk, you're asking an object to respond to a combination of method name and arguments. The receiver then decides what code to execute — roughly speaking, what function to call. For example:
myTurtle moveToX:5 y:10.
In this statement:
- The receiver is
myTurtle. - The message being sent to
myTurtleismoveToX:5 y:10. - The selector in that message is
#moveToX:y:, pronounced "move to x colon y colon". (IMO it's okay to just say "move to x y" for brevity if it's clear you don't mean moveToXY:.) - The arguments in the message are 5 and 10.
Your code is allowed to send any message to any object. When you run the code, the object will figure out upon receiving the message whether it knows how to respond. (Well, technically it's the Smalltalk runtime that figures this out.)
Every Smalltalk statement, other than variable assignment, has the same form as above. That's almost all the syntax you need to know. In particular, there is no control-flow syntax. If-then, while-do, for-each, and so on are done with message sends. Historically, the answer to "How on earth is that possible?" has been one of the first "aha's" people experience when they're new to Smalltalk. These days, with languages like Ruby in the mainstream, it's not so much of an "aha".
I'm running out of steam so that's all for now. 