This book is written for anybody who wants to become familiar with the basic use of VAST Platform (VA Smalltalk) in the software development cycle. It introduces the basic concepts behind constructing applications from components with the VAST visual tools as well as the concepts behind the more conventional coding based on Smalltalk class library using the VAST development tools.

The book is designed for diverse learning styles, allowing the reader to learn by building examples, by touring the set of tools available in VAST Platform , or by becoming familiar with key concepts underpinning the product.

The examples illustrate the major steps in the development cycle from application creation to deployment. They encompass the two major methods of constructing an example: visually or textually.

Knowledge of object-oriented concepts is not a requirement for this book. The reader need not see any code for the visual programming examples. The code-based examples are meant to illustrate a development cycle rather than delve deeply into the development language. However, the reader wishing to develop code in VAST Platform should learn Smalltalk and its object-oriented approach soon after getting started.

This book assumes the reader has access to VAST Platform installed on a single machine for use by a single software developer. This configuration is called “Standalone” in the Installation Guide. More complex installations will work perfectly well for the examples, but the product may not launch exactly as described in the book. If you wish to use another configuration than standalone, you may want to talk to an experienced member of the development team when your experience deviates from the one described in this book.