Smalltalk is a pretty great language, but its syntax is unusual. I've taught introductory programming in Pharo three times and, in my experience, there are two places where novices get repeatedly confused with syntax. First, there is the differences between assignment := and comparison = . Obviously, Smalltalk is not the only language where that is a problem. Java is even more confusing, with assignment = and comparison == . In Squeak, there was the attempt to address this problem head on with using _ instead of := and having it show up as an arrow pointing left; while that nicely addressed that problem, it proved awkward for many reasons (e.g., it only appeared as an arrow in Squeak, it wasn't compatible with other Smalltalks). In addition, comparison is a simple message send, where assignment is the most critical language element that is not an object or a message. In other words, there is a huge difference in meaning between the two and a really minor syntactical one. That's confusing to novices. Even after covering it repeatedly in class I still find novices making that mistake. As their debugging skills are minimal, this can be a real obstacle. Second, there is the problem of keyword messages with more than one argument. In Java, "this.someMessage( arg1, arg2)" is pretty comprehensible to a novice. In Smalltalk, "self someMessage: arg1 and: arg2" seems like two message sends (i.e., "this.someMessage(arg1).and(arg2)"). While novices won't see multi-argument messages very often, they do come up (e.g., ifTrue:ifFalse:). I have my class do regular quizzes on identifying messages and this still tricks them up even if they've already seen in 10 times. Now, I'm not advocating changing the Smalltalk syntax; that's just unlikely to happen. But, perhaps syntax highlighting could be employed to good use. For instance, it is extremely helpful that blocks and parentheses show by color which ( [ go with which ] ). Perhaps something similar could be done for messages with more than 1 argument. For instance, the message could be underlined in different colors. That way I could easily see which ifFalse: went with which ifTrue:. It would also give a visual indicator: (for novices) Be careful, this message is one of those weird ones that's longer than it first appears. For assignment vs comparison, you similarly need a powerful visual cue that assignment is an usual thing, where comparison is a pretty ordinary thing. Perhaps an arrow decoration could appear behind the :=. These may seem like trivial issues. For experts, they are. I don't need any of it. I don't find syntax highlighting and command completion that useful in my programming. But, I'm proficient with a debugger. Should I occasionally make such a trivial mistake (e.g., forgetting to type : in :=), I immediately find it while debugging and easily fix it. For novices, using a debugger is not an option. Remember, they don't understand what a stack is. Syntax highlighting is the best debugging feature that they understand. And these are two real common mistakes that they make that could be addressed by improvements to syntax highlighting. Just a suggestion, Jeff -- Jochen "Jeff" Rick, Ph.D. http://www.je77.com/ Skype ID: jochenrick