(I'll add to Doug, since he already scored some points) I thought about 'hide' in the sense of not showing technical terms where they are not needed. For example, with Win you still have a FD named A: and a HD named C: (or with the Amiga df0: etc.) these are technical terms that are not necersary for the machine nor the user either. Or think about file extensions ... etc. Of course, over the years these artifacts have decreased, but they are still there and influence new developments (or should I say hinder ?) One of the best developments of the last years was the Newton. Basicly an organizer, but instead of just compressing a desktop (like WinCE) they developed a new, OO (sorry Doug) way to make the tool usable - For me it's a notebook that 'thinks' while I'm writing. They realy designed someting new, exciteing _AND_ usefull, a 'thing' to use and enhance the user, not another stupid technofilled computer. The Newton was a discovery to me like my first KIM, Apple ][ and the Star (and nothing like it was between) I didn't use Smalltalk for years, but a good start might be: http://www.phaidros.com/DIGITALIS/englisch/nav00002.htm (or better http://www.phaidros.com/DIGITALIS/) And from IBM there is almost a course: http://www2.ncsu.edu/eos/info/ece480_info/project/spring96/proj63/www/ IBM supports also with VisualAge for Smalltalk an actual tool with up to date PC integration (The complete Visual Age series is worth a try - The best progamming environment fo PCs today). Integration of Smalltalk into other systems have always been a bit clumbsy, since Smalltak is selfcontained. There are several professional (speak made to earn money) systems available for free (like Smalltalk Express http://www.objectshare.com/se/seinfo.htm ). I think there is even a GNU Smaltalk, but I don't know if it can catch up. Squeak is also free AFAIK. And for the obscure there is Little Smalltalk - a very tiny, non graphical system, completely available as source. If I remember corectly its from a Mr. Budd at the Oregon State Univ. And classic Smaltalk implementations can run on a 4.77 MHz 8088 with graphical environment in a speed good enough to test it. And on a 386sx with lets say 2 MB mem its a rocket :) Squeak is an interesting implementation (and http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/ a good source :). I havn't watched them for a while, but the web page sounds impressive Exactly - like Pilot and Basic :) Ges what, I'm doing Assembly programming, and the concepts are OO ... and its as fast as ever ... OO isn't a class of tools, it's a way of thinking, and I like it. In fact, there is (almost) no diference between good procedural and good OO design - at the end there is a machine cycle to be done - all this concepts are just schools to think and to help you organize your work. Its just, with all this tools programmers spend most the time in fighting the concept (and the quirks of the tool) instead of using it. C'mon, English is based 40% on Latin and French (and the rest is German), so why bee afraid of just two words :) Gruss Hans -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK