I also should mention that I only started getting into the Smalltalk stuff a year ago, and am by no means an expert. But reading about it and using it (Pharo mostly) really changed the way I think not only about programming, but computing more generally. If you ever watch a Kay lecture you won't really get what he's saying until you've used one of these live environments, whether it's Smalltalk or an interactive Lisp.
I recommend getting the Adele Goldberg "Smalltalk: The Language and its Implementation" (colloquially known as the "Blue Book"). I find it to be the second best programming book ever, aside from The Little Schemer.
Thanks, will try to check out that book at some point, and Pharo too.
Thanks, I'll check those out. For a sub-thread that involved my original post getting down-voted, this is turning out to be very informative. ;-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11834887
That is the top comment by him in that sub-thread. My question to him is 2nd reply below, then he replied at even greater length. Some pretty deep stuff..
(In another of his comments - this one, in a different thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14677396 - he also mentioned that Lisp and Smalltalk are two of only a few languages that share some of the features he talks about.)