What Do Smalltalk, Puzzles and Tim Ferriss Have in Common?
Arden Thomas has been a Smalltalk enthusiast for over three decades and considers it arguably the best designed computer language ever created. Arden is the Smalltalk product manager and creates screencasts about how to best use the product (“Hidden Gems”) and introduces fun ways, such as building puzzle apps, stock charts, parsers, reusable frameworks and more, to get the most out of Smalltalk. Recently, Arden came across a few resources that he’d like to share:
You may think of puzzles as simply a way to pass the time, but they can teach problem-solving, creative thinking and even software application development! Tim Ferriss, author, prominent podcaster and one of the best interviewers around, recently interviewed A.J. Jacobs who is the author of several books including the most recent, The Puzzler, which is about, as you might surmise, puzzles! There are some interesting insights and perspectives on puzzles in the interview. The Fifteen Puzzle, a puzzle we use as an example you can build in our quick-start guide, is briefly mentioned too.
Check out these resources:
- The Interview: “A.J. Jacobs — How to Be Less Furious and More Curious” https://tim.blog/2022/04/22/a-j-jacobs-2/
- The book The Puzzler: https://www.amazon.com/Puzzler-Baffling-Puzzles-Crosswords-Jigsaws/dp/0593136713/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20
- Learn to program: Learn to program by building the 15-Puzzle application!
Our Quick Start guide walks you through it step by step.
- Learn to program in a language that helped invent modern computing and created the term, object-oriented-programming.
- Learning Smalltalk is a skill that will make you better in almost any programming language.
Want to be less furious and more curious in computer programming? Are you new to programming or just learning Smalltalk? If so, check out these additional resources: