A Brief Tutorial of Smalltalk

Smalltalk is a wonderful and simple language. It is incredibly easy to learn. Let's start with the most rudimentary basics. I will assume that you are running Squeak or a VisualWorks derivative, or something that simply acts like one of these two.

Open up a transcript or workplace window.
In that window, type:

| var |
var := 42.
var

Now select this code and either select the menu item for "inspect it", or
hit the command key for it (cmd-i most likely). An instance browser
will pop up that represents the current value of var, 42. In this browser,
you may see a few things including, the class of the instance, all instance
variables (in this case, just the value 42, but with more complex instances,
you'd see each and every variable).
You can also invoke the code using "print it" or "run it". All three run
the code, but "inspect it" brings up a browser, "print it" prints the textual
representation of it, and "run it" has no side effects (that you didn't code
yourself).
Now change the right hand side of the assignment to be "42" instead of 42
and inspect it again. Get a feel for the browser.
So far, you haven't invoked any actual methods in your code, you've only
been dealing with the most primative smalltalk possible (the assignment, and
a basic reference, both of which are just bytecodes). Now we are going to
start doing some things with these objects, and that will require invoking
their instance methods.
Change the code so that the reference ("var" at the end) calls the "charAt:"
method (referred to by smalltalkers as #charAt:) and pass it the argument of 1.
Try to guess what you will get as a response, and inspect the result.
The code should read:

| var |
var := "42".
var charAt: 1

TODO: finish