Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns

A practical style guide for Smalltalk programming, Kent Beck's collection records as named patterns the habits that experienced Smalltalk developers usually pick up through trial and error. It begins by introducing the idea of patterns for the language and explaining why they work. The core chapters then cover patterns for methods, messages, state, collections, classes and code formatting. A closing section follows a development example built with the patterns. Beck addresses programmers, project managers, teachers and students, whether new to Smalltalk or long familiar with it.

Basecamp co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson calls it his favorite programming book and says it still holds up more than twenty years on, full of patterns he enjoys using when writing code.